


Chain of Custody

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [25]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Legal Drama, Multi, child welfare, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:19:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 171,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The concept of causation is an easy one:  you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction.  Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.</p><p>He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.</p><p>But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Other People's Children

**Author's Note:**

> As previously stated in other disclaimers: the following story is a work of fiction. I was a law student when I started this series, and most of my inspiration to start down this crazy path originated when I worked as an intern at an office not unlike the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
> 
> That said, any similarity in this story to real people, places, events, or cases is entirely accidental. Nothing in this story is based directly off my experience. At no time have I lifted real cases, scenarios, or people from my work life and deposited them into this fic, and I won’t be doing so. 
> 
> Along those lines, too, please keep in mind: this is fiction. Although some of the law featured in this story is based on the real law of my jurisdiction, I have done no or very little additional research. Legal concepts may be oversimplified, under-nuanced, or simply wrong for the purpose of the narrative. Some details may be incorrect or omitted. **Nothing in this story purports to be legal advice of any kind.**
> 
> This story involves characters which first appeared in Motion Practice. Reading the rest of the stories for context is not required but may be helpful. This story will spoil the events of previous stories if you’ve not read them first.
> 
> Thank you as always to Jen and saranoh, who are both wonderful beta-readers and better friends.
> 
> Also, as a side note, this fic will feature dynamic tags, and characters will be added as they appear to avoid spoilers for those who read update-to-update.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony have a strange encounter during their Labor Day Party—and a brief, uncertain conversation later that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta-readers, Jen and saranoh.

“You know, far be it for me to talk about this, but that’s kind of a good look on you,” Tony says, and Bruce stops rocking Astrid Odinson to raise both his eyebrows at his husband.

The evening’s dark and cool out on the deck, a night lit mostly by the moon but also by their lawn torches, and all the light glints off the pool like it’s a giant, wavy mirror. Half their friends have already headed home for the night—Phil and Clint, Darcy and Peter, Maria, Peggy, the interns, Jasper—and the others’ conversations are winding down, voices trailing through the yard. Jane’s inside gathering up Astrid’s diaper bag while Thor, Steve, and Pepper orchestrate a very complicated car-swap on the drive out front. They’d asked Bruce—the nearest warm body, standing on the deck and finishing his wine—to hold the baby, and of course, he’d obliged.

She’s almost six months old, cuddly and half-asleep in the dark. She nuzzles a cheek against his shirt, and he smiles as he starts rocking her again.

“Last time I held her, you crossed yourself and asked if you could hire a priest to turn our pool into holy water,” he points out as he drifts across the deck and toward Tony.

Tony shrugs. “Maybe I wanted you in a wet t-shirt contest.”

Bruce sighs and shakes his head. “I’m up against stiff competition.”

“Only if I’m competing while watching you compete and only for very specific values of ‘stiff,’” Tony retorts, and even as Bruce rolls his eyes, he chuckles.

Where he’s standing on the topmost step up to the desk, shadow half-hides Tony’s smile, but Bruce studies it like a memory: the flash of his teeth, the lines around his eyes, the way it lingers even after he rolls his lips together. He stops a few steps short just to watch him, his battered jeans hanging low on his hips and his t-shirt tight over his shoulders, and he’s caught for a moment in how absurd it all feels. A year ago, just dating Tony’d felt like a fever dream, a fantasy saved for lonely nights in his too-empty bed or the white noise of imagination; now, they’re married and raising a teenaged son, their home peppered with scribbled grocery-list post-its and half-finished books that Tony swears he’ll read if Bruce will just stop putting them away on the shelves. Sometimes, Bruce jerks awake in the dead of night and gropes at the sheets, terrified he’ll find himself back in his townhome, alone, a book or a brief sharing his pillow.

But Tony’s always the one sharing his pillow—or clinging to him like a limpet after stealing all the covers.

He stares at Tony in the near-dark, as the ghost of Tony’s smile drifts away to something quiet and thoughtful. Tony stares back.

“What?” he finally asks, and his voice sticks in the back of his throat.

Tony shakes his head. “Nothing,” he answers.

Bruce almost protests—even before he married Tony, he learned the man’s expressions, the thousand subtle ways he reveals his own bluffs—but suddenly, Thor bursts onto the deck with outstretched arms. “I did not mean to be tardy,” he says, “but Steve started discussing a pending case he handed the first appearance on, and then Jane and Pepper informed us that a toddler could move the cars faster, and—” 

“It’s fine,” Bruce interrupts with a little smile. He strokes a hand over Astrid’s back, and she stirs. She’d spent the entire party up and alert, balancing on knees and peering over shoulders, but now, she dozes like an infant again, scrunching further into his grip. He chuckles as he offers her to her dad. “She was already mostly-asleep, I just helped her along.”

“Finally, a quiet ride home,” Thor replies. In his grip, Astrid looks tiny, almost breakable. He grins at Bruce. “Thank you for taking her. I hope she did not offend your other half’s . . . delicate sensibilities.”

He nods over Bruce’s shoulder, and when Bruce twists around, he discovers that Tony’s perched on the railing around the deck and finishing off the ends of his wine. “Yeah, no, it’s fine. Except for the fact that he’s going to smell like _baby_ all night.”

Thor chuckles. “A small price to pay,” he replies.

“You can say that, you’re the daddy,” Tony retorts, and Bruce rolls his eyes even as he smiles.

They say their goodbyes on the deck, Thor waving on his daughter’s behalf and earning a dramatic full-body shudder from Tony for his trouble. The quiet of the night sweeps back over the deck, and it lingers even after Pepper and Steve return from out front. They rejoin the group, their voices rising up just loud enough that Bruce can hear a discussion about lighting a fire in the fire pit. He only realizes that Tony’s heard, too, when he shouts, “I’ll get the lighter fluid in a minute!” 

He knocks back the last sip of Bruce’s wine and jumps down from the railing, but somehow, Bruce beats him to the steps, sliding into his personal space like a puzzle piece snapping into place. For a beat, Tony’s surprised and wide-eyed, but he quickly rolls his lips together and furrows his brow. “The window for sloppy Labor Day sex closed when you decided to hold the baby,” he warns. “You go up and take a shower while I get the fire going and I _might_ reconsider.”

Bruce tips his head slightly, still holding Tony’s eyes, and Tony—trained in the art of negotiation as much as oral advocacy—mirrors the motion. “We’re not talking about what just happened?” he asks.

“About what that just happened?” When Bruce narrows his eyes, Tony raises his hands. “What? It’s an honest question. Because if I’m getting the third degree about something I did or didn’t do—”

“Tony.”

“—it’s only fair that you give me a hint.” Bruce frowns. “Okay, not a hint. Number of syllables? Language of origin? _Something_?”

Bruce rolls his lips together, his eyes still travelling evenly across Tony’s face, but Tony holds onto his tiny, trouble-making smirk with an iron grip. Finally, after the silence stretches long and tense between them, he sighs and shakes his head. “You’re infuriating,” he decides.

“Until death does us part, absolutely,” Tony returns, and he swoops in to kiss the corner of Bruce’s mouth before he squeezes past and wanders out into the backyard.

Bruce stays on the deck for a long time, the warmth of Tony’s lips against his skin fading the same way the warmth of Astrid’s weight already faded from his arms and chest, and walks out into the yard only after the fire’s blazing. He joins their circle of friends midway through a story about Steve and Bucky’s first weeks and months as a married couple, and he falls easily into the laughter. Butterfingers drapes himself across his feet, Dot climbs onto his lap and tucks her head, still damp from the pool, under his chin, and when Miles jumps for a soda, he offers to bring Bruce—and Tony, when Tony complains about their son playing favorites—a water. They stay there for a long time, a family of friends trading stories they’ve already heard, until their stomachs hurt from laughing and their eyelids droop. 

When they douse the fire hours later and start to pull themselves out of chairs they’d rather not leave, Tony steps in to sweep the now-sleeping Dot off Bruce’s lap. She whines before she wraps arms around his neck and huddles in close.

Bucky, halfway through some bickering argument with Natasha, glances over and frowns. “Shit, Tony, let me—”

Tony immediately waves him off, spreading his big hand across Dot’s back once he’s done. “Like I’m not used to hefting around my one and only fairy god kid.”

“If she gets much bigger, she won’t be much of a fairy anything,” Bucky returns, and Steve shoots him a look so thoroughly disapproving that both Bruce and Pepper burst out laughing.

Bruce steers a reluctant Miles into bed while Tony closes up the house for the night, negotiating him into stripping out of his smoke-scented clothes and climbing into bed without a last-minute triple-check of the cell phone he’ll drag onto the mattress with him as soon as the door’s closed. They’re not a “goodnight kiss” family—hard to pull off when your only child’s thirteen and an unrepentant _boy_ —but he lets Bruce stroke a hand over the top of his head. 

“There’s no party to distract you from homework tomorrow, remember,” he notes.

Miles grumbles and shoves a little at Bruce’s hand. “I’m going to write my English essay about how my parents care more about my homework than I do,” he complains, and Bruce chuckles before he turns out the light.

He’s already out of his clothes and under the sheets of their bed when Tony finally wanders upstairs. Bruce turns to watch him as he moves across their bedroom, shedding clothes on the floor and brushing his teeth in the nude, a weird and somehow endearing habit. Bruce studies the line of his back, the curve of his ass and the muscles of his thighs, and he tries not to think of the other surreal parts of a marriage to Tony Stark: the calluses on Tony’s hands, the heat of his mouth, the rasp of his goatee, the roll of his hips.

He tucks an arm under his head and allows his eyes to drift shut as he thinks about the lazy morning they’ll have tomorrow, spread out across their bed until Miles or the dogs turn antsy, then studying one another’s silhouettes through the shower curtain.

Bruce only discovers he’s asleep when he hears Tony’s voice near his ear. Stretching, he realizes that Tony’s climbed in next to him, an arm over the middle of his torso and his face pillowed against Bruce’s shoulder. He cards his fingers through Tony’s hair for a second, Tony’s long eyelashes fluttering shut for a moment. In the dark, Tony’s stripped of all his masks and facades, his face open and bare.

For some reason, Bruce’s stomach twists into a knot at that and again at the way Tony sighs against his skin.

“I didn’t hear you,” he remembers to say after entirely too long, and Tony shifts to glance up at him, his lips pursed. Bruce smiles as his hand slides down to rest between Tony’s shoulder blades. “I think you said something,” he explains, “but I must’ve fallen asleep, because I didn’t—”

“I said it was about kids,” Tony interrupts. Bruce feels himself frown, his brow creasing as he tries to piece together the non sequitur. Tony swallows, the half-second flicker of worry on his face visible even in the dark. “The thing that happened, on the deck, it just— It made me think that we should maybe do the kid thing again. You know, if you wanted.”

He punctuates the statement with a tiny, noncommittal shrug and a quick press of his lips against Bruce’s shoulder, but Bruce knows without thinking that Tony’s staring him down, studying his face for the least sign of approval—or, worse, of disapproval. Bruce holds his expression courtroom steady as he glances up at the ceiling and pulls in a deep breath, not that either thing matters; his heart hammers in his chest and ears, loud enough that he’s certain Tony, curled next to him, can hear. 

He thinks about Tony lying next to him and about Miles batting at his hand while he complains about homework. He thinks of their quiet life, with their dogs and their hateful cat, their consuming work and their busybody friends, and of the winding road that brought them from friendship to _this_.

But he also thinks about Astrid Odinson falling asleep in his arms and about Dot climbing on his lap—and _then_ , about Tony teasing their son about his favorites and about hiking his “only fairy god kid” up on his hip before carrying her out to the car for her parents.

Bruce looks at Tony—his eyes still wide and waiting, his lips rolled together—and reaches to stroke his thumb along the base of Tony’s neck.

“Maybe,” he replies, and his whole chest tightens up when Tony smiles.


	2. No Time Like the Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce (and Tony) deal with all aspects of parenting, including school issues, teenage attitude, and the care and feeding of five-year-old cousins. As it turns out, loving your son and wanting to ground your son for the rest of his life are not mutually exclusive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Bruce is reading _Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother_. I am not even sorry. Credit to my friend Jessie, who is reading the same for her book club and inspired me without even realizing it.
> 
> I am not sure whether the following is true for all prosecutor’s offices, but in our fictional office, there is always an attorney “on call” for late-night and weekend emergencies. 
> 
> Thanks as always for Jen and saranoh, who put up with me (and my extra-crunchy fall leaves!) even when I, say, forget to answer their questions until weeks later.

“Look, I’m just saying that in an office the size of ours, we shouldn’t have to share a wedding month,” Tony explains as they pull up to Miles’s school a few weeks later, his hands drawing circles in the air. “They can have, I don’t know, February. February’s a great month.”

“Have you considered that you’re worrying too much about this?” Bruce asks in response, and Tony rolls his eyes before he steps out of the car.

It’s a beautiful September day in Union County, cloudless and only mildly breezy, and the dead leaves along the curb crunch when Bruce and Tony step in them and then start across the bus lane and toward the school’s front steps. Bruce’d admired the weather from his desk chair, his chin on his hand and the waiting pile of social work reports totally ignored. He’d always loved the outdoors—he’d backpacked a lot with his cousin when they were both younger, serving as an occasional chaperone for poorly planned Girl Scout outings—and more than once, he’d considered leaving everything on his desk and heading out for a bit of sun.

At least, until the phone rang and the secretary at Castle Rock Middle School’d asked him to hold for Principal Johnson. Then, everything’d shifted.

He’d found Tony in Phil’s office, his ass perched on the window ledge and his arms crossed. “I’m just saying, pick a different weekend, keep love alive,” he’d goaded, and Phil’d rolled his eyes at his monitor.

Bruce’d knocked on the doorjamb. “We need to go,” he’d informed Tony once both men glanced over at him.

“I’m kind of working on a solution to a problem here, big guy,” Tony’d said, shrugging. “Come back in maybe half an hour, we can—”

“Miles’s school called, and they need us to come in,” Bruce’d replied, and Tony’d rocketed away from the ledge in record time.

Their shoulders brush as they step up onto the sidewalk in front of the school, an incidental touch Bruce ignores until Tony repeats it a little harder. The ride over had consisted mostly of silent stewing (Tony) and equally silent worrying (Bruce himself) before Tony’d started on his third “wedding month” rant this week; Bruce isn’t sure he’s ready for another one. When he glances over, though, his eyebrows raised, Tony shoves his hands in his pants pockets. “You know,” he says conversationally, “I was cleaning out my e-mail today and found an old message from Jess Jones, and it got me thinking—”

Bruce pauses halfway up the stairs that lead into the brick behemoth that is Castle Rock Middle School. He stares at his husband for a few seconds before he points out, “Now might not be the best time to discuss this, Tony.”

Tony shrugs. “No time like the present.”

“Let’s save it for a present when our son’s not in trouble at school.” 

Tony sighs the way he always sighs when he knows Bruce is right about something: loud and long-suffering. “Whatever he did,” he stresses, a hand landing on the small of Bruce’s back, “I’m sure it’s not _that_ serious.”

“I consider this to be very serious,” Principal Johnson says ten minutes later, and Tony rolls his lips together when Bruce glances over at him.

Sunlight streams through the window and glints off the principal’s watch as she folds her hands atop her desk, and Tony leans back in his chair and crosses his arms like he’s the teenager in the hot seat. They’d glimpsed Miles out in the main office—sullen and scowling, his arms folded tight across the front of his gym uniform and his eyes trained on the floor—but the secretary’d just smiled politely and steered them both into the principal’s private office.

Bruce feels claustrophobic and nervous behind the closed door, but he ignores that to force a small smile. “We’re concerned, too,” he assures Johnson, and Tony at least nods like he means it. “Whatever Miles and Ganke did this time, I’m sure it’s out of character, and we’ll talk to him as soon as—”

“Oh, no, Ganke Lee isn’t involved today,” the principal cuts in, and Bruce feels himself frown as he purses his lips. The woman across the desk sighs quietly and shakes her head. “I’m sorry to be the first to tell you this—I’d assumed that my assistant principal called you to explain the situation—but Miles and another boy got into a shoving match before gym class, and it escalated into a fight during a basketball scrimmage.”

“What?” Tony barks. He sits forward hard enough that his chair almost rocks off its back legs. Bruce’s heart lodges in his throat, his pulse hammering in his temples. “Are you sure you mean our Miles? Miles Morales, sulking in your office out there, heart as pure as—”

“I’m afraid so, Mister Stark,” Johnson explains, holding up a hand. Tony runs the hand that’d just flapped in the general direction of the front office through his hair. “As I understand it, the problem started in his first hour English class,” she continues after a minute, her voice clinical but gentle. “The students have been working on writing a family history, and as I understand it, Ty started harassing Miles about his family situation.”

“Situation?” Bruce asks. Beside him, Tony starts bouncing his leg impatiently. 

Johnson smiles politely. “What’s happened in the last year is this school’s worst-kept secret. Miles is open to talking about it, but some students are not all that understanding.”

Tony snorts. “Shocking that some barely supervised bags of hormones might not be supportive of their fellow man,” he grumbles. Bruce sends him a sharp look, and he crosses his arms again. 

The principal waits until Tony’s glanced out the window to offer another of her small smiles. “Tyrone’s parents already came and collected him,” she says. “They assured me that they will talk to their son about being more tolerant of more alternative families. Not that you’re the only gay parents at our school, of course.”

Bruce forces a smile in return, but Tony just rolls his eyes. “For the record,” he says, “we’re both firmly in the bisexual camp, and I’m not sure I appreciate—”

“Tony,” Bruce warns, his own jaw tightening. Tony clamps his mouth shut, but his leg starts bouncing again. Bruce barely contains a sigh as he glances over at the principal. “I promise that we’ll talk to him,” he assures her, “and that this will be an isolated incident.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Johnson says carefully, rolling her lips together. “This isn’t the first incident we’ve had with Miles since the start of the school year.”

Bruce feels himself draw in a tighter-than-usual breath, and beside him, Tony’s leg abruptly stops moving. He presses his palm against his thigh, his fingers curling against his dress slacks, and for a brief second, Bruce considers reaching over to squeeze his hand. 

Principal Johnson clears her throat softly, and Bruce tears his eyes away from Tony’s fingers. “The truth is,” she continues, her gaze drifting between the two of them, “Miles has become increasingly— I don’t want to call him combative, because that’s not exactly it. He’s more distracted, I’d say, and struggling with something. His history teacher reports that he nods off occasionally, his math teacher says he’s missing assignments, he’s talked back a few times in Spanish class, and now, with this—”

“And you didn’t call us?” Bruce twists to glance over at Tony, who immediately waves him off. “Because what I’m hearing is that our kid’s screwing up left and right and that nobody’s bothered to call us.”

Johnson’s tight smile evaporates into a tighter frown. “It wasn’t that serious yet.”

Tony huffs a breath. “Sounds pretty serious to me.”

“It’s not unusual for middle school students to behave this way, Mister Stark,” Johnson informs him. Her tone is crisper now, clipped around the edges. “And it’s especially when there are problems at home.”

Bruce’s whole body tenses, his shoulders squaring as he leans forward. “Problems?” he repeats.

Across the desk, her face immediately pales, stark white under her shock of dark hair. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”

“No, no, we’d love to hear this,” Tony cuts her off. He gestures for her to go on with a loose, almost dismissive hand, but the rest of his body is taut and tight. Bruce purses his lips, but he never tears his eyes away from Johnson. “Tell us all about Miles’s ‘problems’ at home.”

Johnson pulls her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it slightly, and Bruce feels his stomach churn slightly. Even without thinking, he can name a half-dozen problems Miles’s having at home: talking back when asked to help out around the house, refusing to recount anything he’s talked about in therapy, purposely stopping himself from calling either of them _dad_ , texting Ganke in the middle of the night when he should really be asleep. He retreats into himself occasionally, turns sarcastic more often, and brushes off most of their concerns with a shrug and an eye roll.

“Welcome to having a teenager,” Jessica Jones’d said when Bruce had called her one day at lunch, his pen tapping against his notepad as he tried to stand on his own nerves. “He’s thirteen and the honeymoon’s over. And even better: you can’t make me take him back.”

Bruce’d snorted a laugh. “You’re an incredibly sympathetic social worker.”

“No, see, now when you call me, I’m not a social worker anymore. I’m just an incredibly sympathetic _friend_.”

For a moment, Bruce thinks he hears Jessica’s voice in the back of his head, reminding him about teenaged sons and the post-adoption glow. Then, Principal Johnson sighs. “Miles appears to take any negative comments about his home situation very personally,” she finally says, and Bruce feels his shoulders clench further. “I know that’s probably not surprising, given his history, but that sort of behavior always raises questions about the home environment.”

“The home— Okay, look, I hate that it takes a card-carrying genius for you to put this together, but you know that he’s a mixed-raced kid adopted by two white guys who resolved their relationship-ending fight by getting hitched, right?” Bruce draws in a breath, ready to stop him in the middle of his rant, but the words die on the tip of his tongue when he looks over at Tony. Tony’s perched on the very edge of his chair, his hands working in the kind of precise whirligigs he saves for oral argument, and his face—

He and Bruce argue often enough that Bruce normally assumes he knows all of Tony’s angry faces.

In that second, he finds out that there’s one he’s never seen before, one that’s furious and _hurt_ all at once.

“I mean, I know all the clichés about how those who _can’t_ are the ones who end up teaching, but man, you must really lead the Stupid Parade down Main Street every year if you missed so much as one of those very important facts.” Johnson’s mouth drops open, her expression a mix of surprise and immediate anger, but Tony pushes to his feet. “Our kid shoved another kid, and we will yell at him and keep him very sorry the whole time he’s on suspension or whatever, but I am not going to sit here and listen to you tell us we’re shitty parents. Because we’re actually great parents who just happen to have a normal, hormonal mess of a teenager.” He jabs a finger at her for a moment, the rest of his fingers clenched into a fist so tight that his knuckles are white. 

Bruce swallows.

When Tony throws open the office door, it hits the wall with a bang and nearly brings the front office to a stand-still. He storms past the secretaries and another waiting parent, barking Miles’s name as he passes by his chair; Miles scrambles to his feet and spares Bruce once very brief, very frightened glance before he follows Tony out to the foyer.

Bruce isn’t certain, but he thinks he hears Johnson’s breath tremble when she finally inhales. “That was uncalled for,” she says tightly.

“No,” he says without thinking, shaking his head as he stands. His whole body feels tight, coiled and ready for a rant of his own. For a split second, he’s angry at Tony, but then Johnson blinks baffled eyes in his direction and the emotion immediately redirects itself. “I’ll apologize for his tone, and for the scene he just caused, but not for what Tony said.”

“Doctor Banner—”

“Please call our office and let us know how long Miles needs to be out of school,” he finishes, and he walks out of the room before he’s tempted to say anything else.

He squints into the sun as he steps out the front door of the building, walking fast enough to pass a parent and a very tardy student struggling with his crutches, and it’s only after his vision clears that he realizes Tony and Miles are already at the car. Miles is leaning back against the passenger side of the Prius, his shoulders slumped and his hands in his pockets, and Tony gestures emphatically as he says _something_. He catches fragments of the conversation, but the pieces are woefully incomplete until he’s almost at the bus lane. 

He stops at the edge of the sidewalk, just to listen.

“—raised by an asshole father and a money-hungry man who might actually be a clinical sociopath but prefers the term ‘family friend,’” Tony lectures, his arms spreading out wide. “And then, of course, there’s your dad, a guy who was effectively orphaned at, what six? Raised by Union County Child Services until his aunt deigned to take him in, and you know how much she just _loves_ this side of the family. Sent us a real nice Chipotle gift card for Christmas, she adores her only nephew that much.” 

Miles casts his eyes down at the asphalt, his throat bobbing. When Tony drops his hands, it’s to sigh and shake his head. “You think we won’t get it, but we _get_ it,” he says, his voice quiet enough that Bruce nearly misses it. “And if we don’t get it, the only way to make us get it is to talk about it.”

Their son nods roughly, one of his hands darting up to rub his face, and Bruce’s whole chest aches when he realizes there’s cuts across his knuckles. The leaves in the bus lane rustle as he crosses over to the car; Miles shifts his weight, but he keeps staring at the ground. 

“We’ll need to talk more about this at home tonight,” Bruce says as he walks up, his own hands tucking into his pockets. He’s not blind to the flicker of relief on Miles’s barely-damp face, or the tiny smile that crawls onto the corner of Tony’s lips. “A long talk,” he warns, “but I think we all need a little cool down time before we really dive into it.

“What your dad means is that he’s super mad about my amateur dramatics and wants to yell at me once we’re back at the office,” Tony says. He tucks two fingers under Bruce’s belt at the small of his back, and Bruce pretends that it’s not comforting as he rolls his eyes. “You, meanwhile, are going to turn over your phone and iPod and go spend some quality time in the basement with Lieutenant Colonel Uncle Rhodes.”

For the first time since Bruce stepped outside, Miles’s head snaps up. “Rhodey’s boring,” he complains, his head thumping lightly against the side of the car. “He makes me sit there and do my homework.”

“And sometimes,” Tony adds, pointing a finger at him, “he plays NPR. For hours. Until you’re ready to remove your own fillings with a paperclip just to get out of his office.” Bruce frowns at him, and he rolls his eyes. “Road trip seven years ago. I learned more about those weird Asian tree-eating beetles than anyone ever needs to know.”

Miles releases a pained groan, but Tony just reaches over and clasps him on the shoulder. “It builds character,” Bruce suggests.

“That sounds like something Steve’d say,” Miles points out.

“All the more reason I don’t let them hang out without supervision,” Tony informs him, and he steals the car keys out of Bruce’s pocket before he heads around to the driver’s side of the Prius.

Head still tipped up to the sun, Miles closes his eyes, and for a few seconds, Bruce studies him carefully. He’s not bruised or battered from the fight, other than his knuckles, though Bruce wonders if there’s a reason he didn’t change back into his street clothes. He looks tired, though, worn down from his nights of text messages and life as a thirteen-year-old, and Bruce—

Bruce wets his lips. “We worry about you, you know,” he says quietly.

Miles sighs and rubs the heel of his hand over his face before he finally opens his eyes. “I know.”

There’s a split second then, as Tony starts the car and rolls down the windows, that Bruce thinks Miles might reach out a much-needed hug. He’s too much of a _boy_ to volunteer his affection lately, even when all the hurt and fear on his expression broadcast how badly he needs it.

Bruce raises an arm, a silent offer, and Miles smiles slightly as he shakes his head.

They sit in silence and listen NPR the whole way back to the judicial complex.

 

==

 

“I’m pretty sure every teenage boy starts a couple fights in his time,” Steve volunteers a few hours later, a pen tucked behind his ear as he leans back in his desk chair. “I mean, I did.”

“Not sure you can call getting your ass handed to you ‘fighting,’” Bucky reminds him, and as punishment, Steve shoves his husband’s feet off his lap.

Steve’s tiny office—still a shrine to Dot’s artistic creations, though it now includes a large amount of her kindergarten schoolwork—feels about two sizes too small for Tony’s impromptu _meeting of the uncles and you too, Barton, you were a shitty kid once,_ but they’re all there anyway, jammed into stolen chairs or, in Clint’s case, sitting on the wide window ledge. Clint’s fashioned a tiny crossbow out of the shell of a pen, a rubber band, and a Q-Tip; only about one in four of his paperclip arrows hits the post-it target he’s stuck to the back of Steve’s chair, but he’s certainly trying. 

Bruce, on the other hand, runs fingers through his hair. “I’m not sure I understand the point of this meeting,” he tells Tony for the third time since the appointment’d populated on his Outlook calendar.

“The point is that our son is suspended from school for fighting and only our former juvenile delinquents can help explain why he’s such a problem child all of a sudden.” He pops a handful of Craisins into his mouth and offers Bruce the bag. Bruce shakes his head. “So I thought we’d hold court with the Army vet, the scrappy Army wife, and the actual felon.”

“Expunged felon,” Clint corrects. Steve swears under his breath when one of the paperclips lands in his hair. Clint immediately stows the crossbow behind his back.

Bruce sighs and when Tony digs into the bag of Craisins again, he holds out his hand for a few. According to Rhodey’s latest e-mail, Miles is working diligently on his next math assignment and pretending to be disinterested in the Tchaikovsky piece on the radio; according to the school secretary, Miles is suspended through Thursday.

It’s only Monday. Bruce has two full docket days, back-to-back, and Tony’s finalizing two briefs to be filed on Friday. He’s not sure how they’ll balance all that and a kid who’s home for most of the week.

At least the Craisins still taste okay. (Tony once kept an open bag of banana chips in his bottom drawer for way too long. No one mentions banana chips around the office, anymore.)

“Look, he’s a kid being a kid,” Bucky says, his feet propped on the edge of Steve’s desk instead of on Steve himself. He shrugs. “Teenagers do this kind of thing. Not to pull out a cliché, but—  
”

“Boys will _not_ just be boys,” Steve protests, and his husband immediately rolls his eyes. “Kids fight, but they always have a reason for it. Shrugging it off as just ‘something that happens’ is how football players turn into rapists.”

“Or basketball players,” Clint volunteers. Steve whirls around to face him and catches a paperclip in the lap, but Clint ignores his scowl to lean back against the window. “Trust somebody who got his ass kicked as much as he kicked ass: you fight ‘cause something’s wrong, not ‘cause you’re hard-wired to. Second you assume it’s in somebody’s nature or whatever is the second you pretty much say they’re an animal instead of a person.”

Tony squints across the office at him. “You know humans aren’t vegetable or mineral and are therefore technically animals, right?” 

Clint flips him off instead of answering.

“I don’t think anyone’s surprised that our thirteen-year-old is occasionally mouthy and emotional,” Bruce assures the room. He plays with the arm of his glasses as he wets his lips. “What I’m concerned about—and what I assume Tony’s concerned about—”

Tony raises his hands. “Assume away.”

“—is that he’s not talking to either of us about it.” He shakes his head as he glances over at their friends. “He won’t discuss therapy, he won’t discuss his biological family or his uncle, he won’t open up to us about what’s happening at school. He pretends—or maybe he’s convinced himself—that we don’t understand.”

“Because he’s an orphan alone in the world and we’ve never been in his exact shoes,” Tony chimes in, and Bruce almost drops his glasses as he twists to gape at him. He shrugs as he pops another couple Craisins in his mouth. “We talked while you were, I don’t know, mopping up my lack of diplomacy with a Sham-Wow,” he explains. “Or, maybe more accurately, I tried to get him to talk, and he came at me with ‘you don’t know what it’s like to have your whole family disappear.’”

At the window, Clint releases a long, low whistle, but Bruce hardly hears it. No, instead, Bruce is consumed by the way his breath seizes and his stomach aches and by the immediate emptiness in the middle of his chest. He remember the conversation in the parking lot suddenly, Tony’s wide gestures and the talk about orphans, and his throat feels too thick to swallow.

He says nothing, though, just stares at his hands. 

“That hurts,” Steve says quietly. 

“It’s a thing that happened,” Tony replies, his tone almost aggressively causal. Bruce reaches over to squeeze his knee, and he’s not really surprised when Tony retaliates by grabbing his hand and tangling their fingers together.

“Family’s complicated as hell when you’re that age even when you’re with your _actual_ family, never mind being adopted,” Clint says. He swings his legs off the ledge and rests his elbows on his thighs. “You guys had screwy teen years—aunt swooping in to pluck you out of foster care, dead mom in a car crash—so you probably didn’t go through the family crisis the same way as the rest of us.”

“Family crisis?” Bruce echoes.

“Yeah, when you look at the people you’re related to and wonder how the hell _that_ happened,” Bucky puts in. He holds out his hand until Tony shares his Craisins. “From the time I turned eleven until my folks shipped me off to live with Aunt Evelyn, we all fought like cats and dogs. I once told my parents I wished we weren’t related.”

“Having met your parents—” Steve starts, his mouth curling into a tiny smile, and Bucky cuts him off by nudging him in the arm with his foot. “He’s right, though,” he adds after he’s patted Bucky’s ankle. “I fought with my grandmother more times than I can count. A lot of ‘you’re not my mom’ and door-slamming.”

Clint snorts. “Cute that you think that’s a fight.”

“When you climb out the window to run away and forget your inhaler, yeah, it is,” Steve retorts. For the first time in documented history, Clint actually looks a little impressed by him. “Miles is a good kid who’s having an identity crisis,” he says after another few seconds, his voice steady and soothing. “You give him enough time, he’ll come around and start talking to you again.”

Bucky grins. “Says the man who’s afraid our five-year-old is keeping secrets,” he teases.

“Our five-year-old’s answer to what she did at school on any given day is ‘stuff,’” Steve returns, and Tony almost chokes, he’s trying so hard not to laugh. “I just want to make sure she’s learning.”

“Could be running a meth lab,” Clint says seriously.

Bucky laughs, but he also pings a Craisin off Clint’s forehead for good measure.

The so-called meeting breaks up shortly after that, with Steve off to Judge Dunbar’s courtroom and Bucky retreating to call a witness for the fifth time that afternoon (his words). Bruce knows that Tony’s on his heels as he says goodbye to Clint on his way down the hallway, but he only realizes _how_ close the other man’s following when Tony steers him into his office, kicks the door shut, and presses him against the wall. Bruce rolls his eyes, ready to complain—he’s a half-day behind in his work and he knows their evening will be spent in serious discussions with Miles—but then Tony’s wrapping him in a suspiciously fierce hug.

There’s a transcript box digging into Bruce’s shin, but Tony’s breath is warm against his neck. It’s hard to resist drawing him in closer or tipping his face against his skin.

“He keeps this up, this _freaking out the parents_ shit,” Tony says after longer than usual, his lips dangerously close to Bruce’s pulse point, “I’m moving to one of those ‘upgrade any time’ contracts and investing in the newer model.”

Bruce chuckles. “If this is the setup for an ‘early adopter’ pun—”

“You have so little faith in me that it hurts sometimes,” Tony interrupts, but he kisses Bruce softly on the neck before he pulls away. His thumb traces a nonsense pattern on Bruce’s side, soothing and agitated all at once; Bruce’s chest aches again when he notices the sheer amount of worry trapped in Tony’s big, gentle eyes.

He leans in and kisses him then, just once. “I promise he’s fine,” he says quietly.

Tony snorts. “You can’t _know_ that,” he points out.

“It’s still better than promising the opposite,” Bruce replies, and strokes the soft hair on the back of Tony’s neck.

 

==

 

“You want me to die of boredom,” Miles complains that night, his face buried halfway into a couch pillow. “I get in one stupid fight, and you punish me by turning it into ‘take your son to work’ week.”

“Would you prefer ‘send your teenager to daycare with the toddlers’ week?” Tony threatens, and Bruce rubs his temple with two fingers. “Because I can call around and see if that’s a thing.”

Miles groans and attempts to smother himself with the pillow while, a few feet away, Bruce crosses his arms over his chest. Tony rolls his eyes and stalks back into the kitchen to top off his glass of water for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. It’s a stalling tactic, an opportunity to calm down before he skins Miles alive, and Bruce sighs as he listens to the clink of ice cubes hitting glass.

“You know you’re not old enough to stay home alone.”

Miles bolts upright. “I’m thirteen, not three. You can trust me.”

“Can we?” Tony calls from kitchen. When Bruce glares at him, he shrugs and hoists himself onto the counter. “I’m just saying, I thought we could trust you, and then you started a fight with a kid for reasons you still won’t tell us, so now—”

Miles groans as he throws himself back onto the couch. “Oh my _god_.”

Bruce grits his teeth. “You’re not really helping.”

Tony just sips his water.

The whole day—or at least, the whole day since Tony’s impromptu meeting of the minds—has reminded Bruce of all his years flying into O’Hare Airport in Chicago: circling his destination in a pressurized metal container but trapped in a holding pattern. Tony’d locked himself in his office and worked right up until five, then offered to start the car while Bruce collected Miles from the basement security office. They’d driven home, thrown dinner together while Miles worked on homework—“No TV or video games until after we talk, and I’m not negotiating about this,” Tony’d informed him, and Miles’d stomped outside with his literature book—and eaten in awkward, sullen silence. Bruce’d tried to coax some conversation out of Miles, too, but he’d just snorted, rolled his eyes, and stabbed vindictively at his broccoli.

“He’s a good kid,” Rhodey’d explained once Miles’d slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed out to the elevator bay. The security monitors had all glowed that eerie blue-gray in the relative dark of his office. “Didn’t give me any trouble, but he did _not_ want to talk about what happened, either. I would’ve had an easier time pulling his teeth out with pliers.”

Bruce’d forced a tiny smile. “Life with a teenager,” he’d half-joked.

“Not your normal life with that kid, though, right?” Rhodey’d asked in response, and Bruce’d shrugged as he rolled his lips together. “Tony talks about him like he can do no wrong. Which, I mean, knowing Tony’s history and all that, I think he’s kind of messed up on where that line is, but . . . ” He’d grinned and trailed off, leaving Bruce to chuckle a little even as he’d shaken his head. “Point is,” Rhodey’d continued, “I get the impression this is new from him. And weird.”

“I think he’s testing the waters,” Bruce’d admitted quietly. He’d played with his cuff, a stupid distraction from meeting Rhodey’s eyes. “He never fully settled in with his uncle, but with us— He’s been with us for almost a year now. He knows he won’t drive us away, so there’s no harm in trying to work out whatever’s going through is head.”

“Like how to be raised by two married guys who love each other louder than any people I’ve ever met?” Bruce’d frowned, and Rhodey’d raised his hands. “Not criticizing, just pointing out the obvious. Because like I told my girlfriend a couple weeks back: there’s people who love each other, people who _really_ love each other, and then there’s you two.”

Bruce’d snorted. “I can’t decide whether that’s a compliment.”

“It’s whatever you want it to be, because I am not crossing my best friend’s guy.” When their eyes had finally met, though, Rhodey’s smile had faded. “He’s a good kid,” he’d said again, more softly, “but I think being good and being ready to spill everything to your pretty well-adjusted parents and their friends, that’s two very different things.”

“They’re not well-adjusted,” a voice’d volunteered from the doorway, and when Bruce’d glanced over, he’d caught Miles leaning against the jamb. 

Rhodey’d grinned. “That’s why I said _pretty_ well-adjusted, kid,” he’d retorted, and Miles’d actually laughed as Bruce crowded him out the door.

Now, Miles sighs and lifts his head just enough to look over at Bruce. Stubborn as he’s been all day, Bruce can read the exhaustion that’s crept into his features, the dark circles under his eyes. He’s one part their rapidly healing, willful son and one part the scared, confused sixth-grader Bruce first met in a Union County courtroom. The more he sees of that second boy, the more his heart aches.

Tony draws in a breath to say something, and Bruce tosses him a quick, warning glance as he shakes his head. Tony pauses, lips parted, and then slowly nods.

“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t want you to die from boredom, or cleaning your room, or scooping the cat box,” Bruce says, and the glimmer of a grin catches the corner of Miles’s mouth. He abandons his post by the entertainment center to sit on the edge of the chair nearest Miles, his arms on his legs as he leans forward. “But we need to know you’re safe while you’re not in school, and you abused our trust just enough that we’re back to thinking we need someone else keeping an eye on you.” Miles rolls his eyes, a look of mutiny crossing his face, and Bruce raises a hand. “You don’t have to stay down with Rhodey if you don’t want to. Bucky and Thor are off docket, Phil’s free all morning, and you can sit with Tony or Pepper if you stay out of their way.”

“And bring me sodas,” Tony chimes in. Miles pushes himself onto his knees to half-glare over the back of the couch. Still perched on the island, Tony shrugs. “Pepper’s on a soda-fetching strike until I apologize for drinking her last weird green tea thing from the break room fridge.”

Bruce frowns. “She spent three days convinced Natasha drank it.”

“Yeah, well, in my defense, it wasn’t labeled, so—”

“They argued about it loud enough that Jasper threatened to call security.”

“Jasper’s a wuss,” Tony volunteers. Bruce rolls his eyes, but Miles—a thirteen-year-old boy to the core, apparently—snickers. Tony winks at him, and Bruce sighs. “But, anyway, the point your dad’s trying to make—with a lot more words than are necessary, it’s no wonder all our child welfare briefs require the heavy-duty binding machine—is that yeah, you have to come into work, but you don’t have to listen to NPR all day with Rhodey if you’re not into that.” Miles huffs out a breath, which Tony promptly ignores. “You can do homework, help out with shredding, whatever you want, but until you can prove to us that this whole gym class brawl was just a quirky isolated incident, you are on lockdown.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Miles insists for the fifth or sixth time that evening. He dips his head to roll his forehead against the back of the couch. “I don’t always want to say everything that goes on in my head, and you—”

“Aren’t asking for that,” Bruce says quietly. Miles glances over at him, and he offers the boy a small smile. “You can talk to us about what’s happening at school, or with you, whenever you’re ready to. We can’t force it out of you.”

“But we can and will make sure your actions have consequences, because that’s kind of what parenting’s all about.” Tony pauses, his glass frozen midway through an emphatic gesture, and frowns. “I sounded like Rogers, didn’t I? Next thing you know, I’ll be saying that I’m not mad, just _disappointed_ , and then the world will really implode upon itself.”

“I’ll be sure to text him about this slip-up later,” Bruce promises, and even as he screws up his face in a disgusted expression, Tony grins warmly enough to stop Bruce’s heart.

Bruce’s reading in bed an hour later when Tony scoots over and rests his chin on Bruce’s shoulder. He stays like that for a moment, his breath and goatee tickling Bruce’s skin. Bruce closes his eyes for a moment and soaks him in.

“How worried are you really?” he asks after they’ve sat there too long, the ignored book flat across his lap.

Tony tilts his head and presses his lips against Bruce’s shoulder. “He needs something from us that we’re not giving him and we have no idea what it is,” he murmurs quietly, and Bruce nods as an answer.

 

==

 

“I’m just pointing out that our approved loan amount tanks if you lose your job after murdering our relator,” Bucky tells Steve Saturday afternoon, and Bruce bites back a grin as Steve glares at his husband. 

According to Tony, Steve and Bucky have been house-hunting for “approximately seventy years, give or take whatever romantic gay non-marriages they suffered through in their previous lives,” but Bruce thinks it’s only more like three or four months. They started slowly, slipping out of slow summer work days to meet with a relator and occasionally dragging Dot to open houses. ( _I saw a pretty blue princess house with three potty rooms and some swings!_ she’d reported to Tony one Saturday—and therefore blowing her parents’ house-hunting cover.) Now, Dot spends one afternoon a weekend at Bruce and Tony’s while her fathers poke their way through countless viewings and always come back disappointed.

“You’re like the person who rejects an online dating profile because they used the wrong form of ‘there,’” Tony’d criticized on the third weekend, sprawled on a deck chair with his feet on Bruce’s thigh.

“Steve believes very strongly in good grammar,” Bucky’d replied dryly, and Steve’d glared at him a bit like he’s glaring now.

“You know that you can customize the perfect house like a Domino’s pizza, right?” Tony asks. They’re inside today, gathered around the kitchen island as Bruce tries to seed tomatoes for a recipe despite Tony crowding into his personal space. Across from them, Steve stops glaring to raise an eyebrow. “There’s a least three new housing developments popping up within a, I don’t know, half-hour radius. You can specially order whatever you want. Three pink princess bathrooms for the three pink princesses in your family.”

He punctuates his last sentence by stealing Bruce’s glass of water. Bruce rolls his eyes while Steve points out, “Unlike you, we don’t have a lifetime supply of stocks in the bank.”

“What’s a lifetime supply of stocks even look like?” Tony muses, and Steve huffs of a breath like he might reach across the island to shake him. “I mean, totally disregarding the fact that nobody keeps stocks in a bank—might as well shove them between your mattress and your box spring while you’re at it—I’m curious if they’re rationed out by day, or week, maybe yearly—”

“I think it’s time for beer,” Bucky interrupts. Steve’s jaw clenches until the other man wraps a consoling hand around his arm. “Come on. Beer from the fridge in the garage, where you can’t kill the guy who babysits our kid once a week.”

“That’s more Miles’s title lately,” Tony offers, and _that_ is the remark that sends Steve stalking off toward the garage. Bucky catches Bruce’s eyes long enough to shake his head—Bruce may be new to the language of long-suffering husbands, but he knows _I don’t know why I married him_ when he sees it—and he smiles and shrugs at Bucky as he follows Steve out of the room. Tony, on the other hand, hikes himself up onto the counter by the sink. “I’m just saying, if they stopped with the relator and actually built their own, they’d be a lot—”

Bruce sighs and sets down his knife. “Please stop poking the wasp’s nest with a short stick.” By the time he twists around, Tony’s wearing his most innocent expression—big eyes, pursed lips, his head cocked slightly to the side. Bruce wipes his hands on a dish towel before he crosses his arms. “When’s the last time you needed to buy anything on a budget?”

“I think you’re comparing apples to, I don’t know, fighter jets here, big guy, and that’s a little—”

“Tony.”

Tony tips back his head and pretends he’s not rolling his eyes. “Fine, I’m poking the hornet’s nest a little. And that’s the idiom, by the way, _hornet’s_ nest, so the next time you start in on me about mixing my metaphors, I’m going to—”

The back door bursts open before Tony can finish his monologue, and suddenly Dot’s in the kitchen, her face split by an enormous grin. She ducks around Bruce and Tony to crouch under the breakfast nook table; when her makeshift uncles glance over, she raises her index finger to her lips. Her once-ponytailed blonde hair falls loosely around her shoulders, tangled with some sort of leaf headband she’s clearly fashioned for herself. Her face is smeared with half-dry dirt, and her pants are grass-stained.

She starts to giggle, covers her own mouth with her hands, and then just giggles through her fingers.

“Do we want to know?” Bruce asks. It’s surprising how often in the last few months he’s started a conversation that way. More surprising: the five-year-old knows when to say _no_ and stop pushing her boundaries.

Miles, on the other hand—

Dot shakes her head just as Miles walks in the door, Dummy bouncing along behind him like he’s stuffed his pockets full of dog treats. Unlike Dot, Miles is neither grass-stained nor muddy, but he too wears a leaf crown. He drops his eyes to Dot’s dirt trail through the kitchen—of course there’s a dirt trail, she’s five and clearly in the middle of an important game—before he grins. “Hey, do you guys know where Dot is?”

Bruce rolls his lips to keep from grinning, and Tony blinks cartoonishly. “Dot?” he asks. He’s very good at pretending he’s a horrible actor. “I thought she was with you. Didn’t we send her out there with her cousin? She plays with Miles, we make dinner—”

“I make dinner,” Bruce corrects.

Tony waves him off. “—her dads storm off because I poked the wrong stinging insect’s nest, and—”

“We’re playing hide-and-seek,” Miles interrupts, sounding like he’s a half-second from laughing. Under the table, Dot giggles again; Dummy hears her and immediately bounds over, his whole butt wagging. Miles pretends not to notice as he fishes a glass out of the cabinet and fills it with water. “She must have hidden _so_ good this time, because I can’t find her anywhere. I checked all over the backyard, and nothing.”

“Could she be inside?” Bruce asks helpfully. Dot chokes off her laughter, probably because she’s shocked by the betrayal.

Miles stops drinking to stare at him. “That’s cheating.”

“And?” Tony prompts, smiling over the lip of his own glass.

“And Dot would _never_ cheat at hide-and-seek.” Dot giggles again, louder this time, and it prompts Dummy to bark playfully at her. Tony clucks at him until he crawls out from under the table and canters over. “No, she must still be outside. She’s _so_ good at this game.”

“Or you’re surprisingly awful,” Tony suggests with a shrug, and reaches out with his bare foot to nudge Miles’s hip. Miles rolls his eyes and smacks at his leg, and for a moment, the _and seek_ part of the backyard game is replaced with the push-pull half-wrestling of a giant five-year-old and his son. Tony manages a split-second noogie through Miles’s short hair before they pull apart and grin at each other.

It’s one of the few genuine grins Bruce’s seen on his son all week, one that overtakes his face with warmth. He’s spent a lot of the last week sulking—in offices at work, in his bedroom, at therapy (at least, according to his doctor), during a special _I’m not checking in with you but actually am_ McDonalds dinner with Jessica Jones—but he’s been freer since Dot showed up at their door. They’ve played outside all afternoon, covering the drive in sidewalk chalk, perfecting clumsy figure skating moves in Fisher-Price roller skates, building forts of questionable structural integrity out of firewood, and now, hide-and-seek. Bruce’d tried to work for part of playtime, but the laughter from the yard’d distracted him enough that he wandered outside with a book to enjoy the fall sun and pretend to read; a half-hour after he’d walked out, Tony’d joined him on the deck and cat-napped while the firewood fort became their hideaway on a desert island.

Bruce forgets sometimes that thirteen-year-olds are still _kids_ and capable of playful stupidity with imaginative five-year-olds. He remembers now as Miles wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and leans over Tony to put his glass in the sink. 

“I’m going to check back outside,” he says, purposely emphasizing the last word. “Since I don’t think Dot’s a horrible cheater who breaks the rules she made me pinky swear to, she must still be out there.”

“Must be,” Bruce agrees, and he winks at Miles as the boy (and the dog) trail back out the front door.

Dot dashes after him a moment later, stealthy as a five-year-old can manage, and by the time Steve and Bucky return from the garage, there’s peals of laughter echoing in from the yard. A quick glance out the window reveals that Miles’s picked Dot up and is twirling her around while she squeals.

“Did we miss something?” Steve asks.

Bruce smiles to himself as he returns to the tomatoes. “Dot cheats at backyard games,” he informs their friends, and he laughs with Bucky when Steve promptly blames that tendency on Tony.

The Rogers-Barnes family stays for dinner—a thick curry smothered over rice, garlicky and filling enough that Miles declines a second plate for the first time in ages—and the adults retire to the deck as the sun starts to set over the final adventures of the firewood fort creation. Dot’s armed with two popsicles that she waves like she’s directing a plane in for landing, but they’re too far away to hear what she’s telling Miles. He must follow her instructions, though, because eventually she pulls him into the fort’s perimeter and offers him one of the popsicles for his trouble.

“They’re kind of great together,” Bucky remarks after the kids’ve settled down cross-legged with Butterfingers standing guard a few feet away. He’s sitting in a lawn chair that’s arranged at the perfect angle for him to prop his feet up on the edge of Steve’s deck lounger. He balances his coffee cup on his thigh. “Don’t get me wrong, he really needs to stop letting her boss him around—”

“She needs to stop bossing people around in general,” Steve puts in.

“—but I think it’s good for them.” He shrugs slightly, stealing a quick glance in Bruce and Tony’s direction before looking back out of the kids. “You know, you can always send Miles over if he’s having a rough night or weekend. Might help wind him down.”

Bruce rolls his lips together, but in the chair beside him, Tony squints at them. “Meaning you want to run him like my dogs but with the fairy goddaughter in tow?”

Bucky snorts. “If you want to look at it that way . . . ” he intones before sipping his coffee.

Steve rolls his eyes, and Bruce isn’t sure whether he means to direct it at Tony or his own husband. “Meaning,” he clarifies, “that sometimes, kids need a buffer between themselves and their parents, no matter how good of parents they have.” Tony releases a halfway offended huff of breath and crosses his arms. Steve sighs. “As tough a time as he’s having lately, he’s a different kid around Dot. Maybe it distracts him, maybe he feels less alone. I don’t know. But if it helps him sort out what he’s going through, we’d be happy to have him over for dinner one night a week, or to take him and Dot out on Saturdays when we’re not looking at houses.”

Bruce forces a small smile. “Thanks,” he says. Next to him, Tony nods in distracted agreement. “We’ll at least think about it.”

“You’ll take that back when our kid knows all the words to the Boy Scout loyalty pledge and blood oath,” Tony retorts, but he ruffles Bruce’s hair when he stands to refill his coffee cup—and squeezes Steve’s shoulder as he passes his chair, too.

“He’s not wrong about Miles,” Bruce points out in the near-dark of their bedroom hours later. Tony hovers in the bathroom, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, and Bruce shrugs as he swings his legs into bed. “He does unwind when he’s with Dot.”

“He unwinds when he’s with Dot for lack of a better option,” Tony returns. He spits out his toothpaste before pointing the brush in Bruce’s direction. Bruce rolls his eyes. “That girl smells anxiety like a dog smells fear, and then she needles you about it until she gets her way.”

“Says the man who bought her a flower girl dress three months after our wedding.”

“Exactly my point: needling.” Bruce chuckles a little and cracks his book—Tony’s nightly hygiene routine is a ten-step process that culminates in earthy lotion that Bruce will now forever associate with their bedsheets, but that’s a long time to sit in bed and wait. He’s still on the same paragraph when Tony flicks off the bathroom light and crawls into bed; he pretends to keep reading as Tony burrows in next to him and forcibly attaches himself to Bruce’s side. He smells like water and lotion and his goatee scratches against Bruce’s chest. Bruce runs fingers through his hair while he tries to read.

“Book club?” Tony asks as Bruce finally turns the page. He nods, but then promptly sighs when Tony bends the page he’s on to glimpse at the title. “Okay, please tell me someone besides you picked this book, because if I find out you’re aspiring to be a tiger mom, there’s no hope left in this universe.”

Bruce smiles slightly. “Miles starts violin lessons next week and piano the week after.”

“And now I’m torn between being weirdly disturbed and weirdly turned on. Talk about a banner day.” He rolls his eyes at the terrible pun, which is apparently the only opening Tony needs; before Bruce knows it, the book’s upside-down on the bedside table and his glasses are askew as he kisses his husband. They’re languid, lazy kisses, familiar and still somehow too exhilarating for words, and Bruce feels his heart rate pick up as Tony reaches up, removes his glasses, and tosses them on the bedside table with the book. “I break them, I buy them, I know,” he whispers against Bruce’s mouth, and they drink each other’s laughter as Bruce allows Tony to drag him down.

After, when the only light left in the room is the dim glow of one lamp and their pajama pants and ratty t-shirts are all but forgotten on the floor, Tony presses his nose against Bruce’s shoulder. “He’d be good at it,” he says quietly.

Bruce twists a few inches to glance down at him and finds himself distracted for a moment by the hint of silver in Tony’s temples and the familiar lines around his eyes. His hand drifts along the plane of Tony’s back before he says, “I can’t form an opinion until I know what you’re talking about.”

“Miles,” Tony replies, tipping his head up. Bruce feels himself frown. “I know that’s your big worry, right? Miles can’t handle being the only kid right now, isn’t dealing well with his awesome new life with his awesome new parents. But I also think that if his whole beef’s feeling alone, maybe—”

Bruce drops his head back against the pillow and closes his eyes. He knows from the abrupt end of Tony’s last sentence that he’s wearing his frustration on his sleeve—his hand’s stilled against Tony’s back, his shoulders’ve clenched, his breath rushes out in long sigh—but he’s not sure how to hide it, either. He rubs the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Tony—”

“I’m just saying,” Tony responds, and he raises a placating hand before his whole arm snakes around Bruce’s waist. “Maybe it’s the wrong answer, I don’t know, but I think it could also be the right answer. Which is why I’m mentioning it here and now, instead of, I don’t know, buying an _it’s a future foster child of unknown origin, sex, and age_ cake and shoving it in the break room at work.”

Bruce snorts at him. “Save that trick for a night you _really_ want me to stay at someone else’s house.”

“Yeah, see, I stopped falling for those empty threats after you put a ring on it,” Tony replies, and he kisses Bruce’s shoulder before they settle down to sleep.

 

==

 

It’s after midnight a few days later when a cell phone rings in their bedroom.

Bruce jerks awake, immediately propping himself up on an elbow, but Tony just grumbles in his sleep and presses his face into his pillow. One of the phones on the bedside table is lit-up and buzzing, its old-school payphone ringtone nearly deafening. 

“Tony,” Bruce says, and shoves Tony’s shoulder. Tony grunts and bats him away with a heavy hand. “Tony, you’re on call this week, you need to—”

“Tell them I’m soaping an alien,” Tony mumbles against his pillowcase.

Bruce groans as he starts groping through the mess on the bedside table—it’s a graveyard of books, papers, and reading and drinking glasses—until he finds the old flip-phone that each attorney carries during his or her on-call week. It currently belongs to Tony—snoring, dead-to-the-world Tony—and Bruce sighs as he flips it open.

“District attorney on-call phone, hold for Tony.”

On the bedside table, the ringing continues.

Bruce blinks and pulls the phone away from his ear, discovering too late that the screen only displays the time and battery strength. The room plunges back into silence as he stares blankly at the phone, and the ringing only starts again _after_ he’s stowed it back on the bedside table. For the first time since he jolted awake, Bruce recognizes the ringtone not as Tony’s, but as his own.

When he finally grabs his phone, he recognizes the number as one of about the dozen assigned out to different Suffolk County Child Services investigators. His heart leaps into his throat, and he swallows before he answers, “This is Doctor Banner.” His voice sounds thick and clumsy from sleep.

On the other end of the line, he can hear dozens of disconnected, half-echoing noises: a shout, the high-pitched whine of a siren, uneven breaths, a distant rushing sound. He thinks for a second that nobody’s there, but just as he’s about to hang up, a man’s voice blurts, “Ach, sorry.” The words are crisp, almost clipped; in his half-awake stupor, Bruce thinks he recognizes the accent. “I didn’t think anyone picked up and that I’d have to call back again, but—”

“Kurt?”

“ _Ja_ , sorry,” Kurt Wagner—one of the many child welfare investigators Bruce works with, a native of Germany with at least two divinity degrees and a thick accent—says sheepishly. “I probably should have opened with that. Tonight is not one for the record books, my friend, and it’s only getting worse.”

Another siren wails in the background, louder than before, and Bruce sighs as he rubs a hand over his forehead. He struggles to follow Kurt’s jumbled explanations are at the best of times, let alone when he’s half awake. “I’m not sure I understand. Has something happened? You usually don’t call unless—”

“It’s serious, yes, I know,” Kurt interrupts. For the first time, Bruce notices how harried he sounds, almost breathless. “There’s been a fire. A house fire, actually, and the firefighters don’t think at this point they can salvage much. Everyone is scrambling, the police and the paramedics included. But then Ororo suggested we call you and ask you to come in, and, well. I didn’t disagree.”

Bruce frowns. “You want me to come to the scene of a fire?”

“If you can, yes.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose to hold back his sigh. “Kurt, I think you and Detective Munroe have your wires crossed. Tony’s on call this week, not me. If you give me a half-hour, I can get him up and out the door, but—”

“I don’t think I explained this properly,” Kurt interrupts. A note of genuine distress leaks into his voice, and Bruce purses his lips. After another distant shout echoes down the line, Kurt huffs out a long, tired breath. “The house, it’s owned by a couple. Three children—one a teenager, one about your son’s age, one who is maybe six or seven.” The cold hand of dread wraps its fingers around the softest part of Bruce’s stomach. “As far as anyone knows right now, the family was in bed when the fire started, and it—”

He trails off then, the end of his word clipped off by an audible swallow, and Bruce swallows with him. “Kurt,” he says, and he ignores the way his own voice catches.

“The fire spread quickly,” Kurt continues, quieter than before, “and the only ones who made it out of the house safely are two of the children.”


	3. Leaping Before You Look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce arrives at the scene of the fire and discovers an interagency nightmare. The fact that he solves that nightmare is more Tony and Jessica’s doing than his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for the off-screen death of non-canon characters, a somewhat on-screen fire, and discussion of fire-related injuries.
> 
> According to folklore, [Old Lady O’Leary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_O'Leary) lit a lantern while milking her cow, and the cow kicked it over to start the Great Chicago Fire.
> 
> I know precious little about firefighting, so anything related to the actual process of fighting the fire in this chapter is pure conjecture.
> 
> An IEP is an individualized education plan and sets out the accommodations and goals for a student with a disability. In child welfare, disruption refers to a child needing to be removed from a foster home and placed somewhere else. In some states, gifted students qualify for IEPs, as well.
> 
> Thanks as always to my glorious beta-readers, Jen and saranoh.

The September wind smells like smoke.

The thought hits Bruce like a gut-punch as he steps out of his car, and for a moment, he pauses in the middle of the street, his fingers curling around the lip of the door as his eyes adjust to the strobe effect of emergency lights flashing down the street. He’s almost a full block away from the scene itself—the street is too cluttered with emergency vehicles, fire engines, police cordons, and news vans for him to park any closer—and even before he can clearly see the fire, he can smell the smoke.

He shuts his door carefully, locks the car, and zips up his hoodie a little higher.

He’d half-rolled, half-fallen off the bed after hanging up the phone with Kurt. Tony, for his part, had stayed silent and still the whole time he banged through the bedroom, finding clothes and shoes with the finesse of a large animal with an inner ear problem. Only when he’d sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his socks did the lamp flicker on; by the time he’d reached for his shoes, Tony’d draped himself along his back and kissed him just under the ear.

“Take the on-call phone,” he’d said, his voice thick with sleep but still warm. “If there’re kids with dead parents, you’ll probably need an emergency custody order. Or maybe a search warrant, unless it’s an old lady O’Leary situation.”

“If they need a search warrant,” Bruce’d warned, glancing over his shoulder, “I’m calling the _actual_ on-call attorney to come in.”

“Mmm, no, see, you say that, but you’re a good husband who knows that I need my beauty sleep and also that Judge Smithe hates me.” Bruce’d rolled his eyes, but before he could turn back to his shoes, Tony’d caught his chin in a hand and leaned in to kiss him. He’d tipped into the heat of Tony’s bare skin and the burn of his stubble, and they’d tumbled back into bed, Tony tugging Bruce down by his t-shirt and Bruce planting a knee between Tony’s legs. When Tony’d broken away, lips parted in tiny pants, Bruce’d seriously considered the distraction.

Tony’d stroked fingers along his jawline and smiled. “Go save the children.”

“Please remember to get ours up for school if I’m not back in time,” Bruce’d replied, and Tony’d smiled against his actual goodbye kiss.

The kiss and the warm silence of their home feels like a hazy memory now as Bruce treks down the sidewalk toward the still-burning house, the red-orange glow of the fire a sharp contrast to the darkness he’d just driven through. A uniformed patrol officer, young and harried, stops him at the barricade until he digs out his work ID and hands it over for inspection; the man frowns, worry lines creasing his face, but allows Bruce to pass. Bruce clips his ID to his hoodie, just in case, and bypasses the line of reporters in an attempt to find Kurt.

One, a redhead with a very earnest expression, catches his arm. “Excuse me,” she says quickly, “but can I—”

“I’m just a lawyer,” Bruce promises, raising his hands. They stare at each other for a moment, her eyes narrowing, and he smiles slightly. “I don’t even know what’s happening enough to say anything,” he adds when her fingers flex uncertainly, and she rolls her lips together as she releases him. He glances over his shoulder a few times, waiting for her to shout a follow-up question, but she’s already back to perusing the crowd for sound bites.

Most of the crowd are men and women around Bruce’s age, bundled up against the cold in jackets or bathrobes. A few children cling to their parents, curious or crying; an old woman talks with a police officer, her hands jumping in the air as he nods along with her report.

The smell of smoke increases as Bruce draws nearer to the house. No one but firefighters is allowed even within the vicinity of its front yard, but even here, two lots down, the fire blazes hot enough to burn his eyes, transforming the firefighters into black, shadowed blobs as they fight against the two-story inferno.

He swallows without thinking about it. His stomach churns, half from the scent of the smoke and half from—

“No, Kurt, this is the biggest inter-agency clusterfuck I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something!” a familiar voice snaps, and Bruce twists on his heel just in time to watch Jessica Jones throw up her hands. She’s dressed in a t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair up in a ponytail and her Union County Child Services windbreaker hanging halfway open. The lanyard that holds her ID badge swings viciously as she plants her hands on her hips. “You can’t just throw kids into your system first and ask questions later! When my supervisor hears about this, she is going to—”

“ _Nein_ , do not make this out to me my fault,” Kurt Wagner snaps back, jabbing two fingers in Jessica’s direction. He’s a tall, slender man with a shock of dark hair and, right now, a darker expression; in skinny jeans and a thick navy sweater, he looks like he’s stepped out of a photo shoot rather than rolled out of bed. Then again, Bruce’s always thought that about him. “What would you do if you were in my situation? Would you wait? Would you possibly allow two children who just lost their parents—”

“Sylvia is still in critical condition,” Jessica cuts in sharply.

“—spend the night in fear _and_ without knowing where they will wake up in the morning?” He crosses his arms over his slender chest while Jessica tightens her jaw. “We have limited placements, and I worked to find them somewhere to stay. The fact that I didn’t staff it—”

“Means you leapt before you looked, like you always do!” Jessica snaps back. Her ponytail bobs when she tosses her head. “ _This_ is my problem with your agency, you never take more than five seconds to think about a decision before you plunge into it, and now—”

“I feel like I should intervene,” Bruce interrupts, holding up his hands, and they both whip their heads around to stare at him. Kurt’s shoulders and face both soften in something like relief, but Jessica—the anger flickering across her expression like flames of a different sort—just snorts at him. He forces a tiny smile. “Or I can let you fight, but that’s maybe counter-productive to whatever’s going on.”

“Says the man who married Tony Stark, arguer at law,” Jessica grumbles, but at least her grip on her hips softens. 

Bruce feels his smile brighten a little at the jab, but a few feet away, Kurt rubs his temple. When Bruce closes the distance between himself and the social workers, he’s not surprised to see that exhaustion’s clearly etched its way across Kurt’s face—and, to a lesser extent, across Jessica’s. “The children are not children,” he says.

Bruce frowns, but Jessica waves her hand. “He means they’re not biological or legal children,” she says. Her tone suggests that she’s trying to clarify Bruce’s confusion; she sighs when she realizes he’s still staring. “The kids who got out of the fire. They’re two of my foster kids.”

Something cracks then, louder than thunder, and Bruce’s heart leaps into his chest as he twists to glance over at the still-burning house. As he watches, the roof collapses in on itself, folding like a child’s poorly constructed block tower. It crashes through the second floor, bringing the walls down with it, and then through the first floor. The ground shakes, sparks and flames jump high into the air, and the police officers start pushing the cordon back another forty or fifty feet. But within seconds, the fire starts to ebb, dampened by the ash and cinder that’s crashed down on top of it.

Bruce’s pulse races in his temple. Kurt’s hand is plastered over his heart, his panting audible even over the renewed shouts of the firefighters.

Jessica regains her nerves first and swallows thickly, her lips pressing into a tight line. “Ed and Sylvia—the homeowners, the Pierponts, whatever you want to call them—are foster parents through my agency,” she continues, her voice shaking subtly as she wraps her arms around herself. “They moved here six months ago with their son Tristan. I didn’t want to disrupt their placements, so my kids moved with them.”

“The kids who got out,” Bruce says quietly. He only realizes that he’s not _asked_ it when Kurt sighs quietly. 

“We did not know they were foster children when we received the call,” he says, shaking his head. “The children were being evaluated, Ororo wanted me on the scene to take them once the paramedics cleared them to leave, and I didn’t think to check before finding them an emergency placement. We should have staffed the case better, made sure they weren’t in the system,” he admits once Jessica narrows her eyes at him, “but this late at night, and with how poorly the state Department of Children’s Services keeps records—” 

“He found them a placement,” Jessica jumps in when Kurt starts to trail off, “but we can’t place them through his agency unless we staff the case with his team and my team. And I can’t find them a placement on this short of notice, and not with Teddy’s issues.”

“Issues?” Bruce asks.

She heaves a sigh, her shoulders slumping slightly. “He disrupts placements more often than most kids change their socks.”

“And knowing that,” Kurt adds, “I don’t know if the placement I found will even consider him. If our agencies can even agree.”

“And that’s a big ‘if,’ right now,” Jessica agrees, her mouth quirking into a small, bitter smile.

Bruce nods, the cold, smoky wind curling around him and cutting through his hoodie until he shoves his hands into his pockets. The fire’s still bright, but more contained, and a few of the firefighters have broken away from the pack to tug off their helmets and wipe sweat from their foreheads. They’re young, but Bruce is constantly surprised at how young strangers look to him; other attorneys, social workers, the checker at the supermarket, the mechanics who service Tony’s ludicrously expensive cars. In the dark of the night, he feels every one of his forty years, his bones creaky and his heart tired.

He tries to blame the tired feeling on his rude awakening, but he knows it runs several layers deeper than that.

“The parents and their son didn’t make it?” he asks, glancing over at Kurt. 

“The mother—”

“Sylvia,” Jessica offers softly.

“ _Ja_ , sorry. Sylvia is at the hospital, badly burned, but the others . . . ” Kurt’s voice tapers off, and he shakes his head. “As I understand, the fire started while the family was in bed, but Teddy had fallen asleep on the couch and noticed first. He called 911 and brought the girl out before the firefighters arrived. Sylvia was burned but unconscious, but—”

He rolls his lips together and tucks his hands in his back pockets, shaking his head a second time. Bruce stares at the burning house, the white heat of the last patch of fire burning his eyes along with the smoke on the wind. The shapes around it are unfamiliar black blurs, the shadows of trees and resilient firefighters. He suspects it won’t be long before the home is nothing but smoldering, smoked cinders.

“Elf!” someone bellows, voice booming through the darkness, and Kurt huffs and rolls his eyes as he glances toward the police cordon. Standing near Detective Munroe is Detective Howlett, the collar of his jacket turned up against the wind. He gestures for Kurt to join them; Kurt offers both Jessica and Bruce a long-suffering glance before he trots over to the two detectives.

Jessica screws up her face. “If our detectives yelled for me like that—”

“Kurt and the detective have a unique relationship,” Bruce replies. She raises an eyebrow, he shrugs, and they fall into a companionable, if not comfortable, silence. He tips his head up to glance at the sky, the stars blotted out by smoke and clouds, and it’s only after his mind wanders to Miles—home asleep in his bed, safe and comfortable under painted stars—that he asks, “What will happen to the— What are their names?”

“Who?”

“The children who escaped the fire.”

Her mouth curls into a gentle smile. “Teddy and Amy,” she tells him, and a little spike of hurt and worry jumps into Bruce’s stomach when he thinks of them that way, two kids with names and personalities beyond _the ones who survived_. She sweeps her ponytail over her shoulder, nodding down the street. There’s an ambulance near the corner, the back doors open; if Bruce tilts his head around the other emergency vehicles and squints, he can see a broad-shouldered teenager huddled under an orange blanket. “Minor smoke inhalation, and they think Teddy strained his shoulder getting Amy out. They’re fine, otherwise.”

“But you don’t have a placement for them,” Bruce reminds her.

“No,” she admits, “I don’t.” She sighs, her hands falling to her hips, and shakes her head. “We’re short placements in general, but these two— Amy’s a sweetheart, but she’s never changed foster homes before and she struggles with change. Never mind transferring her into a new school, setting up a new IEP, adjusting her to new teachers and classmates, taking her away from Teddy . . . ”

She trails off. Bruce purses his lips as she shrugs, then asks, “Have they been placed together for long?”

“About eight months. The longest placement Teddy’s had since he was maybe twelve.” 

He frowns. “How long has he been in foster care?”

“Since he was orphaned at eleven.”

“And he hasn’t been adopted?”

She shakes her head again. “He’s not a good candidate for adoption—his dad was in the military, he receives benefits as the only living relative—and he disrupts too often for me to set up a guardianship. Every time we’ve even come close, he throws some fit or runs off to hang out with his boyfriend, and we’re back at square one. Plus,” she adds, glancing over at Bruce, “he’s really good for Amy. If I can keep them together, soften the blow even a little, then . . . ”

Her voice tapers off, caught in the rush of the last few fire hoses spraying down the now-smoldering husk of the house and the murmurs of the nearby crowd, and Bruce nods idly. His heart feels like it’s somewhere in his throat, choking him slowly, and before he realizes it, he’s remembering the cold, clinical horrors of the group home: white painted walls and unsmiling staff members, children who cried themselves to sleep or who scaled the fence behind the home and tried to run away. He recalls sitting on the steps out to their yard—browned grass, a half-rusted swing set, crooked free-standing monkey bars—and watching one of the other boys his age climb the chain links to freedom. 

He’d never felt bold enough to run or otherwise jeopardize his chance at a somewhat-secure life with unfriendly strangers.

His stomach churns as he thinks about these children in a similar situation.

“I feel like I’m looking for a needle in a sand dune,” Jessica continues, and Bruce looks back over at her. “Seriously, where am I going to find a licensed foster home that’s associated with my agency, is in this school district or willing to drive them _to_ this school district, with the time and the space and the flexibility to deal with all their—”

She stops suddenly, interrupting herself with a tiny intake of breath, and Bruce raises his eyebrows. “Did you have an epiphany?” he asks cautiously.

“No,” she replies, “but I just thought of a foster parent who might be able to take them.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, and you might know him. His name is Bruce Banner.”

Bruce’s mouth pops open, but the protest assembles slowly, jumbling together at a tempo that mirrors his suddenly racing heart. Jessica raises a hand, intending to cut him off before he starts, and he sighs at her. “Bruce, I have _no one_ else,” she stresses. “You know how to do this, especially with emergency placements. Add to that the fact that Tony keeps e-mailing me about how he’s ‘buttering you up—’”

“He’s what?” Bruce croaks.

“—and it’s the perfect match.”

He runs fingers through his hair, his hands feeling oddly shaky. He shoves them in his pockets. “I don’t know if Miles is ready for this,” he says. She rolls her eyes. “I don’t, Jessica. And more than that, I don’t know whether Tony and I are ready for it, given that our whole relationship—” 

“Then make it a trial run,” Jessica cuts him off, and he immediately presses his lips into a tight line. She cocks her head at him. “You told me months ago that you’d consider it,” she reminds him, and he glances back toward the end of the block, where the lights from inside the open ambulance pours out into the street. “Here’s your chance to try it out, and at a time when these two kids need it most.”

The memory of the group home—orphanage, he reminds himself, the loneliest name ever imagined for a building full of half-forgotten children—looms large in his memory again, and he swallows thickly as he stares at the ambulance. The teenager is chatting with one of the paramedics as his arm is settled carefully into a sling. Even from this distance, Bruce can glean a few of his features: shaggy blond hair, a broad chest, a cautious smile. He thinks briefly of the children he’s met through his work, Urban Ascent, or both, and his chest feels three sizes too tight.

Jessica places a hand on his shoulder. “At least meet them,” she says quietly.

He glances over at her. “If I meet them, I might not be able to say no.”

“I know,” she says, and when she releases him to start walking down the sidewalk, he follows.

The firefighters are more-or-less stowing their equipment now, helmetless and a little more casual as Bruce and Jessica wander past. A few more police officers mill around near where Kurt is still chatting with Munroe and Howlett; Bruce recognizes Sean Cassidy, but he can’t place any of the other faces. 

When they cross the Pierponts’ driveway, Bruce realizes he’s walking over the remnants of an enormous drawing in sidewalk chalk, most of it washed away by either the water from the firefighters or last week’s rain. He smiles a little at the sunglasses-wearing yellow sun and the v-shaped birds before he moves along, passing the empty police cars that litter the street.

Teddy spots them long before they’re actually at the ambulance, pushing to his feet even though the paramedic starts protesting. “Miss J,” he says, his voice strong and deep. He looks about sixteen or seventeen, the rest of his body as strong as his shoulders. His face and clothes are dirty, and he looks absolutely exhausted.

“You really should—” the paramedic starts to chide, his hand on Teddy’s uninjured shoulder.

Jessica raises a hand. “First rule of Teddy Altman is that you can’t un-polite Teddy Altman,” she says warmly, and the teen flushes a little bit pink as the paramedic backs off. When Jessica reaches to squeeze his free arm, he practically melts into her touch. “You okay?” she asks quietly.

He nods, the gesture stuttering, and tosses Bruce a glance. “Is he—”

“A friend,” she says, and Bruce rolls his lips together instead of correcting her. Teddy’s glance lingers, his shoulders tight. “He doesn’t bite, at least as far as I know. So again: you okay?”

The teen swallows, then shakes his head. His lip quivers until he worries it between his teeth, his trembling hands curling into tight fists. “I don’t know what happened. The fire was everywhere, and the only thing I could think about was trying to wake everybody up, but Amy was out of it and—”

“Hey, hey,” Jessica cuts in. Her fingers tighten around his arm, but he just stares down at her like he’s noticing a stranger for the first time. He draws in two quick, shaky breaths; when he exhales, Bruce swears his whole body shudders. “You can’t help what happened, yeah? You did the best you could. More than you should have, since you’re not exactly invincible.”

He smiles a little at that, the barest twitch of his lips. “Tommy’s the invincible one.”

“Tommy’s an idiot who’ll probably offer to buy you a sixty-cent soda with money borrowed from somebody else in group when he hears about this,” Jessica retorts, and this time, Teddy smiles in earnest. She strokes his arm gently, and Bruce watches as all his tension starts to unravel. He suspects that somewhere inside that broad teenager is a terrified, parentless little boy. The thought alone makes his chest ache.

After a couple seconds of silence, though, Jessica’s brow furrows. “Where’s Amy?”

Teddy sighs and jerks his head backwards. “In the front of the ambulance with the other paramedic,” he explains. Jessica’s mouth creases into a tight line. “She started to freak out when she had to sit here, so she and Joey went up front.”

“Joey?” Bruce echoes.

“Her stuffed kangaroo,” Teddy supplies immediately. His tiny grin brings some light into his eyes, and for the first time, Bruce can imagine what he looks like when he’s clean, rested, and not recovering from a terrifying house fire. “Sylvie bought it for her at the zoo forever ago. I think it’s been puked on and washed a thousand times.”

“That’s a low estimate,” Jessica jokes. She rubs Teddy’s arm one last time before stepping away. “I’m going to check on her. Feel free to talk about me behind my back.”

She waves a hand vaguely in Bruce’s direction as she walks off, and Bruce forces an awkward little smile. Teddy smiles too, but more tightly, and adjusts the blanket around his shoulders. He shifts his weight, too, not fidgeting nervously like Miles as much as steeling himself for a blow. “Social worker, shrink, or both?” he asks, nodding toward Bruce’s chest.

Bruce glances down to discover his ID badge is hanging backward, his photograph and identifying information hidden from view. “Neither,” he answers, and he unclips it before flipping it around and handing it to the teen. “There was some confusion about you and Amy being foster children, and one of the social workers called me.”

Teddy nods, his eyes tipped down to Bruce’s fuzzy ID photo and official designation: _Assistant District Attorney, Child Welfare Division_. He runs his thumb over the plastic casing before he asks, “Is this how you know Jessica?”

“Not really, no.” When Teddy lifts his gaze, his eyes wide and curious, Bruce finds himself swallowing around a lump of nerves. “Jessica placed my son with me. Well, with us.”

The teen’s lips open, but before he says anything, a flash of turquoise pajamas and frizzy bedhead attaches itself to Teddy’s side. Teddy stumbles, halfway unbalanced, but he’s immediately smiling; the hand that strokes the tangled head of wavy hair is steady and fond. A fat stuffed kangaroo smacks him in the knee.

“I was here the whole time,” Teddy says, almost chuckling.

“You should have come with me and the nurse lady,” a voice from under the hair informs him.

He laughs for real this time, shaking his head as the hair twists away and a face emerges, cheek pressed up against Teddy’s hip. The girl’s probably around Dot’s age with wide, dark eyes and darker hair. Bruce can’t place her heritage—maybe Hispanic, maybe not—but he recognizes Princess Jasmine from _Aladdin_ on her pajama shirt and the immediate bashfulness that floods her expression. She clings tighter to Teddy, who puts a hand on her shoulder.

“This,” he says, nodding toward Bruce, “is Miss Jones’s friend, Mister Banner.”

“It’s actually Doctor Banner,” Jessica corrects, leaning her hip against one of the open ambulance doors.

“Or just Bruce,” Bruce offers. Both children stare at him, but Jessica only quirks an eyebrow. He ignores her as he smiles down at the girl. “You must be Amy,” he says, and he’s surprised by the gentleness in his own voice.

Surprise flits across Amy’s face, too, and she flicks her eyes up at Teddy. When he shrugs, she scowls at him and glances over at Jessica—who also shrugs. Eventually, she frowns and tips her face further against Teddy. One eye, half-covered by hair, keeps peering nervously in Bruce’s direction.

“It’s okay,” Teddy soothes. Amy just clutches her kangaroo more tightly.

The night behind them grows suddenly darker, and it’s only after Bruce glances over his shoulder that he realizes the emergency personnel are finally flicking off their flashing lights. The police cordon is nothing but some dangling _police line: keep out_ tape, now, and he watches as the Pierponts’ friends and neighbors wander back toward their houses. The firefighters patrol the burned-out husk of the house while the uniformed officers string a new line of tape along the perimeter of the lot; Howlett talks to Kurt over the top of his car door while Munroe orders the remaining officers around.

Teddy snorts quietly. “This is one of those times I’m glad I don’t have a lot of stuff,” he murmurs, almost as though he’s talking to himself.

Amy tilts her head up to look at him. “I bet Billy has some of your stuff,” she replies, and he lightly tweaks her nose as he smiles sadly down at her. 

Bruce forces a smile at that, his hands slipping into the pockets of his hoodie as he listens to car doors slam and engines grumble to life. He never meets Jessica’s eyes, but he feels her gaze on him, studying his face as he watches Teddy brush Amy’s messy hair out of her eyes. He knows nothing about these children other than the fragments from his conversations—Teddy’s long history and constant placement disruption, Amy’s fear of change and, apparently, IEP—but he feels his stomach and chest tightening the longer he watches them together. After a few moments, he realizes he’s not seeing them as much as he’s seeing his own son: first scared and alone after Aaron Davis abandoned him, then warm and sweet with his five-year-old cousin.

He smiles to himself and gently shakes those thoughts from his head.

“Okay,” a voice behind him comments, and he glances over his shoulder just as Kurt Wagner reaches forward to clasp it in a friendly gesture. “Ororo and Logan have agreed to release Mister Altman and Miss Jimenez provided that they are available for questions later and their clothes are not washed.”

“Our clothes?” Teddy asks.

“More pressingly, _Logan_?” Jessica demands.

Kurt waves a hand at her and rolls his eyes, forcing Bruce to mouth _Howlett_ in Jessica’s direction. Jessica scowls. “I am going to try to call my supervisor again. I think if I explain the situation, he might agree for a one-night placement before—”

“Actually,” Jessica interrupts, her eyes landing squarely on Bruce’s face, “I think we might have found a solution to the problem.”

At the edge of his vision, Bruce can see Kurt’s frown. He frowns a little himself, his brow creasing. Teddy glances between the two social workers and the stranger whose ID badge he’s still holding, his face open but confused; Amy, presumably scared by Kurt’s sudden appearance, buries her face in Teddy’s t-shirt.

Bruce runs his fingers through his hair. “Let me call Tony,” he says.

Jessica grins. “I’ll call somebody to bring them clean clothes,” she replies, and somehow, he smiles back at her.

 

==

 

Tony greets him at the door.

Bruce still isn’t sure what he expected when he stepped away from the ambulance to call Tony, his stomach tying itself into weary knots as he keyed in one of the only phone numbers he knows by heart. Some traitorous part of his heart’d hoped that Tony’d balk at the idea, whipping out an on-the-spot lecture about acting too impulsively. But then, he’d remembered that he’d married _Tony Stark_ , the poster child for impulsivity, and he’d sighed at himself.

Tony’s phone had rung through to voicemail twice before he’d woken up enough to accept the call.

His answer to Bruce’s question: a breathless _yeah, totally, of course_.

Tony greets him at the door, standing under the eaves with an enormous mug of something that steams against the cold September night; when Bruce locks the car behind him and climbs the step up onto the front stoop, he smells that it’s his “spicy Indian magic tea.” He smiles then, his first real smile since he parked down the street from the Pierponts’ burning home, and wraps his hands around the mug. Tony, on the other hand, reaches forward to wrap his arms around Bruce. He smells like his shampoo and cologne—like _home_ —and Bruce almost ditches the tea entirely to grip him tight.

“Bad?” Tony asks, his lips against the shell of Bruce’s ear. Bruce’s breath shakes when he tries to answer, so he nods instead. He tips his face against Tony’s shoulder and for a moment they stand there, barricaded against the cold by their home and the thick fabric of Tony’s winter bathrobe.

Only Tony Stark swaps out his robes dependent on the seasons.

They walk inside, closing but not locking the front door, Tony’s fingers catching Bruce’s belt loop and holding him closer than necessary. Bruce explains the situation as best he can, fragments of sentences that only make sense in his exhaustion; he details the fire, shy Amy and brave Teddy, the poor communication between the child welfare agencies, the stops Jessica needs to make before she brings the kids over.

“They’ve got spare clothes at their office, and she needs to print out all the paperwork,” he says after he’s swallowed down the last of the tea. He turns the mug around in his hands. “Another social worker’s meeting her halfway, I think, but she’ll need time. And I don’t know if they’ll need to shower, or where they’ll both sleep, or—”

Tony reaches across the kitchen island to squeeze his forearm, and for a moment, they stare at each other in the quiet. “We changed the sheets in the guest room after the last time Dot spent the night and I already pulled out the sofa sleeper in the office upstairs.”

Bruce blinks. “That’s a sofa sleeper?”

“Of course it’s a— One thousand stories about my days as a wayward youth and you’re still surprised there’s a bed in every room of this house?” Bruce snorts and rolls his eyes, but Tony just strokes the inside of his arm. “You go upstairs, shower and change—especially the last part, because we’re going to need to wash those clothes three times before they stop smelling like the world’s worst barbeque restaurant—and I’ll take care of the rest. Make the beds, stock the spare bathroom with shampoo and Dot’s old bath toys, hide all the evidence from our last blood oath.”

“Should I ask why you’re hoarding bath toys?”

“No, because then you’ll question my sanity, and that’s no way to sustain a marriage.” Bruce sighs, ready to protest—or, at the very least, to offer his help—but Tony snags him by the open flap of his hoodie, pulls him halfway across the island, and kisses him. It’s a soft, easy kiss, one they’ve perfected since that heady November night almost a year ago, and when Bruce sighs again, it’s into Tony’s mouth. Tony’s free hand traces a nonsense pattern on his skin through the cotton of his sweatshirt, so soothing and familiar that Bruce almost drowns in its warmth.

When they break apart, the smile Tony offers is a private one that belongs only to him, Bruce, and this moment. “You seriously smell,” he says quietly.

Bruce smacks him on the arm before he heads upstairs, Tony’s laughter trailing after him.

He runs the shower almost scalding hot before he steps in, the steam rising around him as the heat washes away the smell of soot, cinder, and a burning home. He tries to force his mind away from Ed and Sylvia Pierpont and their dead son, but instead, he ends up thinking of other people’s sons, the boys who wandered into and left his life during his years as a temporary foster care placement. He remembers his first rushed, dead-of-night phone call from Jessica and the note of panic in her voice as she explained the situation: police officers called to a gruesome shooting in the worst corner of Union County found a trembling, half-naked eight-year-old huddled in the corner of a bedroom. Jessica’d helped him bathe and change before calling Bruce, but even then, Bruce’d stood at his front window for the last half-hour before she’d arrived, drinking cup after cup of coffee as his heart lodged in his throat.

Quentin’d stayed for four days. Then, his mother’d returned from her trip to visit relatives and discovered just how deadbeat a dad her ex-boyfriend—Quentin’s father—really was. 

He’d be sixteen now, Bruce thinks as he towels himself dry. A young man where Bruce’d only ever known the scared little boy.

He digs jeans and a soft sweater out of the dresser and tugs them on before heading back down to Tony, but on the third or fourth stair from the top, something stops him. He stands there for a moment, hand on the banister, before backtracking into the hallway. He switches off the light there and allows himself a few seconds to adjust to the new darkness before creeping over to the second door on the left and, very carefully, opening it.

Miles’s room is dark and still aside from the glow of his iPod on the bed beside him, undoubtedly still piping music through the headphones even though he fell asleep hours ago. He’s sprawled out across the bed like a kid half his age, one arm flung over his head on the pillow and his mouth wide open; Jarvis sleeps tucked against his side, his fluffy tail twitching occasionally in what Bruce assumes is an exciting dream about chasing birds through their back yard. It’s the same scene he peers in on every night before he and Tony head to bed, but tonight he freezes there, his hand on the doorknob and his heart in is throat.

He sometimes thinks—silently and guiltily—that Miles is their unexpected stroke of luck, the red strand of destiny that tied him and Tony together. And he thinks without Miles—smart, stubborn, curious Miles—he might never have kissed Tony Stark, or gone to bed with him, or married him on a random afternoon in the middle of December.

He’s endlessly grateful for their son—and endlessly terrified that he can’t or _won’t_ love another child the same way.

Tony’s back in the kitchen by the time he’s closed the door over and wandered downstairs, fiddling with their touchy coffee pot and humming quietly to himself. He catches Bruce by his sweater as soon as he’s in range and drags him over; when he kisses the still-damp hair just above Bruce’s temple, Bruce rolls his eyes. “Stop acting like I’ve just offered you a month of birthday sex,” he half-jokes as Tony nuzzles against his ear.

“Was a month of birthday sex on the table? Because if I can spend between twenty-eight and thirty-one days struggling to walk straight, then my god, I’m signing up.”

He flashes Bruce a toothy grin, but Bruce just raises his eyebrows. “You know you can’t joke like that around a seven-year-old, right?”

“I’ll just tell her we spent my birthday riding horses,” Tony replies, his grin growing. “A lot of long, _hard_ rides, where everything’s sore afterwards and your husband’s the only one who can kiss it—”

A knock at the front door—solid but not urgent, loud enough to carry but without waking Miles—cuts Tony off in the middle of his double entendre, and he swallows the last word with a soft, nervous gulp. Bruce feels his shoulders and chest tighten, but he shakes it off to reach around Tony and start the coffee maker.

“If it sprays all over the counter again,” Tony warns, an open-ended threat with no real venom. If anything, there’s the tiny tremble of nerves in the back of his voice.

“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to punish me,” Bruce replies quietly, and he squeezes Tony’s hip before he heads down the hallway to answer the door.

Leading Jessica and the kids into the kitchen is a silent, tense endeavor, and Bruce tries to ignore the way his heart lodges in his throat with every step. He still remembers the first time he set foot in his aunt’s house and the terrifying, surreal feeling that’d raced through him as he stared at family portraits on the walls or as he sunk his toes into thick, shaggy carpeting. They pass Miles’s backpack and a half-destroyed dog toy, a pair of Tony’s socks and an empty cardboard box from their last Costco run, the trappings of this noisy, chaotic, wonderful life Bruce’s fallen into in the last year—and yet, he’s still tempted to stop them, put his hands on Teddy’s and Amy’s shoulders, and promise that his home isn’t surreal, it’s _safe_.

He’s not sure how to do that, though, so he leads them through the living room and into the kitchen.

Tony pretends to fiddle with his phone as they walk in, his fingers idly swiping through _something_ , but before either Jessica or Bruce can introduce him, Dummy and Butterfingers smack into the sliding door with a deafening clatter. They bark and caper, dancing around like idiots, and Bruce only realizes that Tony’s recovered from the shock when he waves his hand at the door. “It’s like you’ve never seen strangers in your sorry little lives, what is _wrong_ with you?”

Dummy leaps up again before racing out into the back yard. Butterfingers, on the other hand, sits on his haunches and lets his tongue roll out.

“Sorry about that,” Tony says, dragging a hand through his hair as he twists away from the door. “I pretend they’re well-behaved, but they’re awful, high-maintenance drama—”

“You have dogs?”

The sound of Amy’s quiet, steady voice surprises Tony in the middle of his miniature rant, his mouth hanging open as his eyes flick over to the girl. The question’s apparently surprised _Amy_ , too, because before anyone comments, she shrinks behind Teddy, Joey swinging from her grip. Tony presses his lips together, a momentary flash of guilt racing across his expression, and Bruce feels himself smile.

“Do you like dogs?” he asks carefully.

Amy’s head bobs almost imperceptibly. Jessica, however, just sighs and slings the duffel bag down on the kitchen floor. “Amy doesn’t like dogs, she _loves_ them,” she explains as Amy shuffles further behind Teddy. “She and Miss Drew go to the humane society twice a month to play with puppies.”

“Well, then Amy’s come to the right place,” Tony says conversationally. He leans his elbows on the island, his hands fluttering loosely; Bruce knows without thinking that it’s one of his hundred antsy, nervous tics. “Because those dogs out there might look all grown up, but they act like clumsy puppies, and they’ll accost anybody who offers them even a _little_ bit of love.”

“Teddy and Amy, please meet Tony Stark,” Jessica says, and Bruce finally turns away from the kids to find that Jessica’s digging around in the cabinet for a coffee mug. “And Tony, before you start: I warned them about you.”

“I’m completely harmless, it’s this guy you need to worry about,” Tony defends, jerking his thumb in Bruce’s direction. He holds onto his grin as he rounds the island, but every step is slow and deliberate, the walk of a man who’s not sure of the next step. Bruce reminds himself that Tony’s always missed these moments, these first nervous half-conversations, and he reaches out to touch the small of Tony’s back. Tony flinches for a second, then melts closer to Bruce, the tension in his shoulders unwinding. He shoves a hand in Teddy’s direction. “If Jessica warned you, she probably already said I was Bruce’s husband, but just in case.”

Teddy hesitates for a moment, his lips pursing into a thin, pink line. “No offence, Mister Stark,” he finally says, “but I don’t think that sentence ended up where you wanted it to.”

“Very few of his sentences do,” Bruce assures him, and Teddy’s treated to the full effect of Tony’s betrayed face before he reaches out and shakes Tony’s hand. He smiles, then, a hint of the teenager under the smoke-scented clothes and hours of fear. Bruce returns the favor, ready to offer a snack or a shower, but suddenly, Tony drops into a crouch, his hand still outstretched.

Behind Teddy, Amy draws Joey up to her chest and scrunches up until she’s almost invisible. Teddy reaches around to touch her hair, but she draws away from him, too. “Amy,” Jessica warns from her place at the counter, her tone uncharacteristically sharp. “We talked about Bruce and Tony in the car, remember?”

“Hey, if she’s not in the mood to say hi, then she’s not in the mood to say hi,” Tony says, and the tiny note of disappointment in his voice twists like a knife in the pit of Bruce’s stomach. He drops his hand and shrugs. “But I figured I’d offer. Level the playing field, because if I know she’s Amy and loves dogs, she should know I’m Tony and am married to Bruce.”

“And have dogs,” Amy adds, the words hardly louder than a whisper.

All the disappointment washes off Tony’s face when he grins. “Look at that, you’re ahead of the curve,” he announces, and Bruce is pretty sure that, when Amy peeks out from behind Teddy a few seconds later, she’s actually smiling.

They lead the kids on a miniature tour of the living room, kitchen, and the downstairs kitchen and guest room before Teddy scratches fingers through his messy hair. “If it’s okay, I kind of want to take a shower,” he says. When Amy inches closer to his side, he reaches down to squeeze her shoulder. “Or I can help you wash up, and—”

“No, you need a good half-hour with some hot water and soap,” Jessica cuts in, her already half-empty coffee mug dangling from her fingers. She nods toward the stairwell. “I’ll take Amy upstairs, get her cleaned up and changed. We can go over paperwork after.”

Tony’s brow tightens. “It’s three in the morning and we need to go over paperwork?”

“We need to go over _so_ much paperwork,” she replies, and polishes off the rest of her coffee before waving Amy over.

She hands out fresh clothes with a kind of ruthless efficiency—sweatpants and a t-shirt for Teddy, soft pink pajamas with snowflakes on them for Amy—and then gently herds the little girl toward the stairs, chatting quietly with her as they go. Tony bumps Bruce’s hip before he leads Teddy back to the bathroom, babbling all the while about his “plumbing genius” and “the miracle of high-quality shower heads.”

“Please don’t spend too much energy listening to him,” Bruce calls after them, his fingers curled around the lip of the counter.

“You’ll soon learn that my husband is a traitor and can’t be trusted,” Tony loudly informs the teenager, and Teddy’s laughter echoes off the bathroom tile. 

By the time the shower rumbles to life, Bruce has puttered around the kitchen in useless circles, pouring fresh coffee for everyone and digging out bottled waters for the two visiting children. The late-night silence presses down on him like a physical weight, and when Tony touches his waist from behind, he starts a little. Tony smiles at him, gentle and uncertain, and Bruce sighs as he sinks a little into his heat.

“Is the first night always this—whatever this is?” Tony asks after a few seconds. When Bruce raises an eyebrow, he rolls his eyes, his hand waving distractedly. “I don’t know, intense. Stilted. Full of silence and avoided eye contact and more silence.”

Bruce shakes his head. “Not always,” he admits, “but often.”

“But you managed to do it, what, twenty-something times before Miles?”

“Something like that, yes,” Bruce confirms, and he runs a hand up the length of Tony’s arm before stepping away.

Amy and Jessica return from the upstairs bathroom before Teddy’s finished in the shower, the girl’s hair neatly controlled in a tight ponytail. She clutches Joey to her chest as she eyes Tony and Bruce suspiciously; when Jessica nudges her back toward the kitchen, she shakes her head and mumbles something. Jessica crouches down, and for a few seconds, they engage in a hushed conversation Bruce can’t quite make out. Beside him, Tony takes a long, steady sip of his coffee.

Finally, Jessica shrugs and rises to her feet. “You need to ask Bruce and Tony, not me,” she admonishes, her hands on her hips. “Because pretty soon, I’m going to need to go home to my little girl, and they’ll be in charge.”

Amy rolls her lips into a tight, thin line. Her eyes drop to the carpet before she asks, “Can I sit in the big chair and watch the dogs?” The echo of the shower nearly swallows her tiny voice.

“Far as me and Bruce are concerned, you can sit in any chair you want,” Tony immediately answers, and Bruce feels his stomach clench at the sheer warmth of his words. He sets down his coffee mug and rounds the island, his steps slow and deliberate. “You want a blanket? We have this huge blanket our kid likes, and I bet he wouldn’t mind you curling up with it for a little while.”

Amy’s head jerks up so she can glance at Jessica, but Jessica shrugs again. The girl squeezes her toy tighter before she answers, “I like blankets.”

“Kiddo, everybody loves blankets,” Tony responds, heading immediately toward the storage cabinet that’s half blankets, half abandoned electronics. Bruce briefly studies the line of his back, and he glances away to find Jessica staring at him. 

“I’m tired,” he defends, picking up his mug.

“Yeah, you looked _real_ tired of your kid-loving other half, right then,” she retorts, and he rolls his eyes.

Once Amy’s settled and the still-running shower fades to a sort of comfortable white noise in the background—“He’s about as persistent as Miles,” Tony jokes, and Bruce frowns at him—Jessica digs out the standard stack of paperwork and drops it down on the table at the kitchen nook. The three of them settle around it, reviewing the same boilerplate language Bruce’s read “twenty-some” times. He falls into the rhythm of it, initialing pages while sipping his coffee, his arm occasionally bumping Tony’s as they trade the pen back and forth. It feels almost like routine or ritual, something they’ve done in a past life some time, and as Tony chews on the pen cap while squinting at a random paragraph, Bruce considers stroking the back of his hand.

He resists the urge—too hard to explain, too easy a target for Jessica’s teasing—but he watches Tony so long and hard that Tony finally glances over, frowning. “I’m grateful you didn’t get cold feet at our wedding, but if this is cold feet about these kids staying here, you have some really awful timing.”

“I’m not the one who slept in his socks all winter,” Bruce reminds him simply, and steals the pen away.

The coffee pot’s nearly empty by the time Teddy wanders out of the bathroom, his hair damp and sticking up in eighteen different directions. The t-shirt from Jessica’s bag is a good two sizes too small, stretching tightly over his shoulders. Tony stares at him for a minute, blinking, before Bruce elbows him in the side.

“Sorry, but he and Rogers should have a tiny shirt contest,” Tony defends, and Jessica rolls her eyes at him as Teddy chuckles. “Seriously, though, we can get you another shirt. You know, a shirt made for sixteen-year-olds who look like they were sculpted from—”

“Uh, fifteen,” Teddy says sheepishly. He runs fingers through his damp hair, his face reddening slightly, and in a rare show of restraint, Tony clamps his mouth shut. “I don’t turn sixteen for a couple weeks, so . . . ”

He trails off, his blush traveling down the side of his neck. Tony, however, just raises his hands. “That’s it, there’s officially something in the Suffolk County water that I, raised on Evian and my father’s bad intentions, never got exposed to. I’m calling Trish Tilby, because somebody needs to report on this to—”

“Is she asleep?” Teddy asks, interrupting Tony’s rant in the middle of one of his hand-flaps. “Sorry, but I just looked over at her, and she seems pretty out of it.” 

He gestures toward the living room, and when Bruce follows his gaze, he notices for the first time that Amy’s asleep on the overstuffed chair. She’s a tiny ball under the big fleece blanket, her cheek resting on her beloved stuffed animal, and the longer Bruce looks at her, the more he feels his chest and throat tighten. With all the fear and uncertainty stripped away, she’s a beautiful little girl with long eyelashes and messy hair, a mirror of what Dot might be in another year or two.

Bruce’s stomach swims until he turns back to his coffee. When Tony raises an eyebrow at him, he ignores it.

“If she’s out,” Teddy says after a moment, “then I want to try and sleep. But she might freak out if she wakes up alone in your living room, though, so I should maybe—”

“We’ll bring her in with you when we head to bed,” Tony offers. The teen blinks at him, his eyes flicking from Tony to Jessica and Bruce; across the table, Jessica frowns skeptically until Tony flaps a hand at her. “What? One night of co-sleeping with big, secure foster brother won’t break her. What’ll break her is the strangeness of this whole arrangement, and since blood-curdling screams aren’t my favorite—”

“She’s actually a really sound sleeper,” Teddy volunteers.

“All the more reason for us to bring her in to you,” Tony returns. “Please, go ahead and go to bed. The guest room sheets are clean, Bruce only put a _tiny_ bit of potpourri in there when I wasn’t looking—” Bruce rolls his eyes, but not before he catches Teddy grinning. “—and I’m pretty sure I checked under the bed for both boogie men and random toys left by our niece. You’re golden.”

Teddy glances briefly at Jessica, but she just raises her hands. “Scary as it is, they’re in charge.”

“Okay then,” Teddy says. He rubs his neck for a second, his grin dimming into something soft and shy, and he rolls his lips together before he adds, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Bruce replies quietly, and Teddy disappears down the short hallway to the guest room. Bruce waits until he hears the door close before he turns back to Jessica. “You’d think he and Amy were actually siblings, the way he looks out for her,” he observes.

“They’ve been together eight months. When you’re in custody, that’s practically a lifetime.” She finishes off the last of her coffee, pushing the empty mug away so she can lean her arms on the kitchen table. “Usually, I’d run through their whole history with you guys—ups and downs, trials and tribulations, whatever—but I’m way too tired and Matt Murdock expects me in court in—” She glances at her watch and grimaces. “—way too short a time. So, the reader’s digest version is that Teddy was orphaned at eleven, no family to speak of, and he’s a steady, reliable kid. Smart as hell, too, and he only rebels if he’s got a good reason too. I’ve worked with him for a long time. He’s got baggage, but he’s a good kid.” She pauses for a second, her mouth quirking into a tiny smirk. “And I give it about thirty-six hours before you meet Billy.”

“Billy?” Bruce repeats.

“The boyfriend.” Tony chokes around a mouthful of coffee, but Jessica just grins. “They met about a year ago. I’d moved Teddy to the Suffolk County shelter on a temporary basis, and as far as I can tell, it was love at first group science project. He’s Teddy’s one true love.”

Tony snorts a little. “There’s no such thing as true love when you’re in high school.”

“You married a man you dated for two months,” Bruce reminds him.

“And I might’ve done the same thing if we’ve met in high school, so on second thought, never mind.” He nudges Bruce’s knee under the table and flashes Bruce a brilliant grin; Bruce rolls his eyes and confiscates the rest of his coffee.

“I’m way too tired for you two to be cute,” Jessica mutters, and Tony’s grin brightens even further. She ignores it, though, pushing loose hair from her face as she sighs. “Amy’s a lot harder than Teddy,” she continues after a moment. “She’s been in state custody for almost a year and a half. She just turned seven, but she repeated kindergarten, and honestly, she’s still behind where she should be in school. She’s had enough chaos in her life that she needs routine, and any sort of disruption to that—”

She trails off, shaking her head. When Bruce glances over at Tony, he’s surprised to find his face set in a tight, serious frown. “She have any family?”

“Just her mom. That’s part of the problem: they’re closely bonded, and the Pierponts only just agreed to consider adoption a couple months ago.” Jessica picks at her thumb nail, her lips pressing into a tight line. “Claudia is the queen of one step forward, two steps back. She’s in rehab right now, and I’ve been driving Amy out to see her on the weekends.”

Bruce nods slightly. “Where’s her dad?” 

“Claudia’s provided a list of likely suspects, but we could never pin them down. Her only father figures so far have been her mom’s string of abusive boyfriends and Ed Pierpont.”

The name hangs in the air, dangling between the three of them like a lead balloon, when an entirely new voice asks, “What’s going on?”

At the bottom of the stairs, Miles is the very picture of a sleep-rumpled teenager; his pajama pants hang too low from his hips, his t-shirt is twisted unevenly, and his eyes are swollen with sleep. Jarvis winds between his ankles, mewing and chirping happily, but the boy ignores his cat to stare blankly at the big chair in the living room. Amy stirs slightly, still comfortably asleep.

Bruce rolls his lips together as Miles rubs his eyes. “Did we wake you?”

“Kind of. I had to pee, but I heard you guys talking, so—” He shakes the cobwebs from his head, cutting himself off, and glances back over toward the chair. “Why’s there a little girl here?”

Bruce glances over at Jessica, who shrugs and raises her hands; briefly, he worries that he missed the _how to explain foster children to your already existing children_ seminar during his early days as a foster parent. He swallows thickly, planning and dismantling a dozen different responses in the time it takes Tony to repossess and then finish the rest of his coffee.

“Short version of the story: scary fire, homeless kids, your dad’s a saint,” Tony says, and he nudges Bruce in the side until he slides off the bench. Tony stretches as he stands, but then he’s immediately heading across the kitchen and into the living room. “Long version of the story, well, we can save that for when you’re back in bed. Your dad can finish the paperwork, and I can explain your brave new world.”

Bruce sighs. “Temporary world,” he stresses.

“I said that already. Didn’t I say that? Maybe I didn’t. It’s late, I’m sleepy.”

Miles snorts at that, a light sound in the half-darkness at the bottom of the stairwell, and the clenched feeling in Bruce’s chest loosens as he watches Tony loop an arm around their son’s shoulders. Miles, still confused and half-asleep, leans into the hug. “Come on, kid. Onward and upward, or whatever.”

Miles’s reply is covered by the sound of their footsteps on the stairs, but Bruce can imagine the dozen confused questions Tony’s about to face—and the hundred questions that will come in the cold light of morning. Jessica’s moving the empty coffee cups to the sink when he turns back to her, the exhaustion on her expression tinged with something darker. She rinses out the mugs before she faces him.

“They’re good kids,” she says.

“I believe you.”

“No, Bruce, I mean they’re some of my very best. And this fire, it . . . ”

She shakes her head, the words falling away into silence, and Bruce frowns. “You’re worried about them.”

“Worried isn’t even the half of it,” she replies. She tucks loose hair behind her ear before she meets his eyes. “Bruce, five hours ago I would’ve told you that Teddy would live with the Pierponts until he aged out of the system—and maybe even longer, because they’d already accepted him as one of theirs. I would’ve told you that Amy had an adoptive placement ready and waiting for Matt to finish the motion to terminate parental rights. These kids, they had a home with a stable family—a family that accepted any kid, no matter their age or race or sexuality or _anything_ —and now?” She drops her hands to her hips, her shoulders slumping. “Ed’s dead, Sylvia’s probably dying, their son’s gone, and nobody knows what happened. I’m not just worried, I’m _scared_.”

“Sometimes, fires happen,” Bruce says after a few heavy seconds of silence, but his voice sounds limp and unconvincing to his own ears. Jessica tips her head at him, nearly smirking, and he forces a tiny smile. “You don’t need to worry any more tonight. They’re safe here.”

“I know,” she replies, and squeezes his arm.

Amy’s only slightly heavier than Dot when Bruce moves her to bed, the girl curling into his grip as Jessica gathers up her paperwork and the now-empty duffle bag. Two extra sets of clothes for each child, probably as ill-fitting as Teddy’s t-shirt, wait on the kitchen counter, and Bruce suspects a brief run to the mall looms in his future. In the guest room, Teddy’s bunched up on the far side of the bed, almost unassuming in how little space he takes up. The bedspread’s still folded up at the foot of the bed, though, so once Amy’s settled, Bruce tugs it up over both of them.

Amy sighs and nuzzles Joey. Bruce thinks Teddy’s shoulders loosen slightly. Either way, he stands in the doorway and watches them sleep, safe and sound for the first time all night.

He locks up after Jessica leaves and spends a few minutes loving on their confused, cold, cranky dogs before he heads up to bed, Butterfingers and Dummy hot on his heels. They caper around the bedroom while he strips out of his clothes and climbs into bed, and he’s not the least bit surprised when Tony rolls over to face him. He’s clearly wide awake, his eyes bright in the dim light. Without thinking, Bruce cups the side of his face and leans in to kiss him, a slow, relieved kiss that stretches out in the quiet. He can’t say the things that keep circling in the back of his mind, not yet, so he explains this way, tasting coffee on his husband’s tongue as they tangle together under their sheets.

When they break apart, Tony’s stroking a hand over his hip. “Kid’s gonna have at least a thousand questions on the way to school tomorrow, and probably half a temper tantrum, but I think he gets it,” he says quietly, and Bruce feels the last knot of tension in his stomach uncoil. “It helped that I reminded him that crazy emergencies happen to just about everybody, and were it not for his dad and the guy formerly known as his dad’s startlingly handsome boyfriend—”

“I don’t remember any startlingly handsome boyfriends,” Bruce breaks in, and Tony’s grin shines like the last star in the universe.

It’s only after they’re spooned together, Tony’s breath warm on the back of his neck, that Bruce thinks to say, “You’re a good dad.”

“Only because I married one,” Tony replies, and kisses Bruce’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Teddy Altman](http://marvel.wikia.com/Dorrek_VIII_\(Earth-616\)) is a member of the Young Avengers. He appears in “The Survivability Thesis” and “Motion Practice” and is briefly referenced in “Diversions.”
> 
> Amy Jimenez is an original character. I couldn’t find a Marvel character who fit my specifications, so I created one. I figured school-aged OCs are acceptable even in the MPU.


	4. Safe and Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce adjusts to the exhausting new normal of two temporary foster children in his household. Except tied into that exhaustion is anxiety and fear, as well as his desire to keep Amy and Teddy as safe and sound as he’s kept Miles—and as Tony’s kept both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a brief conversation about death, but nothing graphic.
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who always make my words better.

The air smells like rain.

Bruce adjusts the collar of the windbreaker before he checks his watch for the seventh or eighth time in as many minutes, confirming that, yes, he still has a few minutes before Miles and his friends come pouring out of their after school program. He’d considered heading up to the school and pulling out early—Tony’d wandered home around three-thirty, hopped up on office coffee but otherwise exhausted, and collapsed onto the couch without so much as a word—but the longer he’d puttered around the house, the longer he’d rationalized keeping Miles with his friends. Or, he thinks now, maybe he’d rationalized keeping Miles in his safe routine, away from the strangers who’d slept in the house that morning.

He leans back against the side of the Prius and closes his eyes.

Honestly, he’s very tired.

Tony’d managed to climb out of bed, wake Miles, shower, and dress before Bruce’d even stirred that morning, blinking awake to the subtle burn of Tony’s goatee against his cheek. He’d stretched and tangled his fingers in the hair at the back of Tony’s neck before he’d remembered the night before—the phone call, the fire, Teddy and Amy asleep in their guest room—and he’d jerked awake so quickly that he almost nailed his forehead against Tony’s. Tony’d smiled, his own exhaustion settling around his eyes, and set a cup of coffee on the bedside table. “Foster kids are conked out dead to the world in the guest room, and from the way Teddy’s snoring, I think they’ll keep it up for another couple hours. Miles caught a good ten minutes of the morning news while he ate breakfast, including the coverage of the Pierpont fire, so it’s going to be a _particularly_ fun ride to school this morning.”

Bruce’d rubbed his face in response and reached for the coffee cup, but then his brain’d caught up with the conversation—and with Tony’s dark slacks and shiny silver tie. “It’s Thursday.”

“You know, I always tell people I married you for your brain, but it’s really in moments like these that I—”

“We have _work_ , Tony,” Bruce’d cut him off, shoving his shoulder lightly when the other man’d started to laugh. He’d swung his legs off the bed and stood, but a wave of exhaustion’d swept over him and the room’d swum. 

Tony’d caught him by the hip. “I have work,” he’d corrected while Bruce’d regained his sea legs. “You have a day of administrative leave, personally approved by the district attorney himself, with instructions to stay at home and, quote, ‘let the actual fucking on-call attorney put out some fires.’” He’d paused, his lips pursing. “In retrospect, I should’ve left out the part where you did all the hard work while I stayed in bed.”

“I have cases,” Bruce’d protested, dragging a hand over his face, “and Teddy and Amy—”

“Are so out of it that they missed our kid turning on the TV and banging around for breakfast. You think they’d survive even a half-day at school? Because if you want them to fall asleep into their free-and-reduced pudding, fine, but then I don’t want you crying to me when nobody gives you the _Number One Foster Dad_ mug at Christmas time.” Bruce’d sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, and Tony’d nudged him back toward the bed. “Sleep, drink coffee and don’t sleep, wander around the house with worry lines all over your face and _still_ don’t sleep, but don’t worry about work or Miles. Because I’ve got it.” He’d rubbed his thumb along Bruce’s waistline, and Bruce’d sighed as he’d closed his eyes. “I’ve got _you_. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bruce’d acquiesced, and he’d kissed Tony goodbye before crawling into bed.

When he’d woken up again, the coffee was ice cold.

The late bus ambles up to the curb then, a hulking yellow giant that casts a long shadow in the late afternoon sun, and Bruce checks his watch one last time before slipping his hands into the jacket’s pockets. It’s technically Tony’s windbreaker, an expensive designer _thing_ with an unnecessary zipper along the collar. It’d been the first thing in the closet as Bruce’d ducked out of the house that afternoon, and the smell of Tony’s cologne had comforted him as he’d climbed into the car. It’s mostly worn off now, but the last hints catch on the breeze enough that he can breathe Tony in.

He’s handled more than twenty other foster children on his own, but he’s only ever handled Miles—their _son_ —with Tony. His stomach twists when he thinks about it.

At the top of the steps that lead into the school, the doors burst open. 

The middle schoolers pour out in tight packs, cliques that Tony’s named over the last year of picking Miles up: the “pretty girls who probably shrill at their mothers” laugh as they bend together over a cell phone, the “future academic bowl champions of America” clump together in reverent silence (most of them reading), the “kids who really resent not being latchkeys judging by the size and color of their mohawks” tromp miserably down the stairs. Miles, Ganke, and Judge bring up the rear with a few girls from their class; Ganke’s clearly attempting to charm one, but she keeps rolling her eyes. Miles is laughing, his jacket hanging open and his backpack slung comfortably over one shoulder, and for a moment, Bruce can forget about the chaos of the last eighteen hours and enjoy the mere existence of his son. 

He’s still surprised, sometimes, that he’s a father. 

And his heart still sometimes races when Miles stops what he’s doing to stare at him.

That’s what he’s doing now, pausing on the stairs as he meets Bruce’s eyes across the bus lane, and Bruce raises one hand in a silent wave. Miles’s smile falters a little as he nods his reply, and then he falls back in step with his friends, murmuring something. One of the girls—Briana, Bruce thinks, who wears a pink streak in her hair and high-top Chucks—reaches to hug him goodbye before he breaks away from the pack.

“Hey,” Bruce greets him once he’s crossed the bus lane and stepped up onto the curb that separates it from the parking lot.

“Hey,” Miles says, and he shoves his hands in his pockets.

They stand there for a moment, Miles staring at his shoes and Bruce watching his face as it slowly tightens, until Bruce holds out an arm. Miles’s eyes flick toward it, almost suspicious. Bruce shrugs. “After last night, I thought—”

“Shut up,” Miles mutters, and he dumps his backpack on the ground to half-step, half-fall into a hug.

Bruce pulls him close and tight, dipping his head like the act of curling himself around his teenager will protect him from all the ugliness in the world. They grip each other until the bus rumbles away and for another few seconds after; when Miles straightens up, he looks sheepish. 

“Tony tried to con me into a hug this morning, but I said no,” he admits, shoving his hands back in his pockets.

Bruce chuckles. “Given how often he assaults _both_ of us with hugs, I’m sure he didn’t hold it against you.”

“What he does to you is _so_ not hugging.”

“And what you and Briana did is what?” Bruce teases, and Miles flushes with embarrassment before he elbows past Bruce and into the car. Bruce smiles, shaking his head a little, and rounds the car to slide into the driver’s seat. It’s only after he’s started the engine and turned down the radio (Tony’s favorite classic rock station; Bruce sometimes finds it hard to listen to anything else) that he realizes Miles’s broken into the plastic bag Bruce left on the seat for him. He pages through the book—a thick comic that Phil’d probably term a _trade paperback_ —without really glancing over. 

Bruce wets his lips. “We had to run to the mall,” he explains, “and since I don’t know where you are in _The Walking Dead_ , I decided to try something different. I guess it’s superheroes and zombies together or something.”

Miles lifts his eyes. “You dug through a bunch of comics to find this?” he asks skeptically.

Bruce snorts a little. “No, but Teddy suggested it, and it seemed right up your alley.”

Miles presses his lips into a tight line, his eyes drifting back to the book. Finally, though, his mouth tips into a smile. “Cool,” he says, and he starts reading as Bruce backs out of the parking spot.

Amy and Teddy’d both slept until just after noon, emerging from the guest room hungry and sleep-rumpled. They’d eaten sandwiches at the breakfast nook, Dummy and Butterfingers nosing at their legs and coaxing a series of split-second grins from Amy. After lunch, Bruce’d suggested they run out to the mall just long enough to pick out clothes that fit and replace some of their school supplies. “We can’t really send you to school in the same three outfits on repeat,” he’d explained, leaning against the counter and trying to look more casual than he’d _felt_. Dragging Miles to the mall generally turned into a battle of wills about jean sizes and “cool” shoes; trying the same with children he barely knew, well. “Jessica won’t be by again until the weekend, so—”

“Yeah, but that’s a lot of money,” Teddy’d volunteered, glancing almost shyly at Bruce. When Bruce’d frowned slightly, he’d shrugged and started playing with his half-empty water glass. “I mean, I don’t mind looking a little stupid, Amy always looks pretty—” Amy’d blushed and wriggled, grinning to herself. “—and you guys— I mean, you have a kid to take care of, right? We can wait for Jessica.”

Bruce’d chuckled a little. “At the risk of sounding like, well, Tony,” he’d replied, “we’re able to pay for what you two need _and_ for Miles.”

“And I can have a green backpack this time,” Amy’d told Teddy, her voice _just_ haughty enough to decide the issue.

They’d wandered through the mall for a good hour and a half, stopping first at a department store and then at a few other shops, picking out a handful of outfits, accessories, and, in Teddy’s case, replacement earrings. “He never wears pretty ones,” Amy’d informed Bruce at one point, hovering near his hip. She’d kept drifting back and forth between her foster brother and then Bruce, appearing at one’s side only to disappear a moment later, comfortable to strike up a conversation on her terms. 

Bruce’d glanced over to where Teddy was browsing through a large selection of silver earrings. “What kind do you think he should wear?” he’d asked.

“Blue and red and gold,” Amy’d said with authority, and she’d smiled when Bruce’d snorted a laugh. 

When they’d swung by the bookstore on their way out of the mall, Bruce and Teddy both laden down with bags, Bruce’d found himself staring at the wide array of comic book collections in the back of the store. Amy’d hovered nearby, flipping through random Japanese manga, as Bruce’d squinted at the different _Walking Dead_ covers and tried to remember where Miles’d left off. He’d picked up one volume, returned it to the shelf, and selected another before Teddy found him.

“You’re into zombies?” the teen’d asked, smiling.

“No, but Miles and his friends like to pass them around. I just can’t remember where he’s at.”

“You know, if you wanted to try something different, there’s a bunch of DC comics with zombies in them.” When Bruce’d glanced over at Teddy, he’d shrugged. “A couple of my friends follow comic books _really_ closely. I mostly nod.”

“And kiss Billy,” Amy’d piped up from a few feet away, and she’d laughed when Teddy’d pulled a face.

In the end, they’d left with the first volume in some complicated crossover series for Miles, a fresh copy of _Great Expectations_ for Teddy’s English class, and a strawberry-banana smoothie for Amy.

“I like blueberry ones best, but strawberry’s good,” she’d commented to Bruce as they walked out to the car.

“I’m glad,” he’d replied, and she’d smiled bashfully around her straw.

Bruce thinks about that smile as he drives, but also, he thinks of Miles, snorting at his comic book as he turns the page. He devours another ten, twenty, fifty panels before he finally lifts his head to glance up at Bruce. They’re sitting at a stop light, and when their eyes meet, Bruce smiles. 

Miles sighs and rolls his eyes. “Stop being such a dad,” he grumbles, but he’s smiling, too.

“Tony’d point out that I can’t help it.”

“Tony’s not here, and seriously, I need _one_ of you to be sane,” Miles retorts, and Bruce laughs as the light turns green.

The Prius ends up parked not far from Bruce’s old condo, just one of many cars on a nondescript neighborhood street, and Miles zips up his jacket as they cross the sidewalk and head into the park. It’s a small park, quiet and empty in the cloudy September evening, but it’s _their_ place, somewhere that’s only ever belonged to Miles and Bruce. Even after everything—marriage, moving, adoption, a summer of camps and vacations and backyard barbeques—Miles still sometimes shoves his hands in his pockets and asks if he and Bruce can come to this park to watch the stars.

Tony and Miles bond over zombies and Westeros, video games and pop culture references that Bruce’ll never understand.

Bruce and Miles bond by sitting in silence and staring up at the night sky.

Once they find a park bench, the wind rattling the half-dead leaves in the oak tree that looms above them, Miles shoves his hands in his pockets and glances at his feet. “This is where we talk about the other kids, isn’t it?” he asks.

Bruce nods. “I know you and Tony talked about them, some, but I wanted to—”

“Tony only gave me the really short version. There was a fire, and now they’re homeless orphans or something.”

“Something like that, yes.” Miles nods a little, an awkward jerk of his chin that keeps his eyes focused on the ground, and Bruce drags his hands through his hair. “Tony and I, we’d talked a little about being foster parents again in the future,” he admits. “We’d never decided anything—and I didn’t _want_ to decide anything, not without talking to you about it—but then last night happened, and . . . ” He releases a long, unsteady breath. “I’m sorry we didn’t wake you up to ask you.”

Miles shrugs and toes the sidewalk with his sneaker. “If you’d asked and I’d freaked out or something, would you have told Jess no?”

“Yes.”

“And then they would’ve gone to—” Miles pauses, his mouth creasing into a frown, and finally looks over at Bruce. “Where would they have gone?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce admits. He leans forward to rest his arms on his thighs. “Teddy and Amy have lived together for a while now. Teddy’s parents are both dead—his dad when he was very young, his mom when he was eleven—and Amy’s been in foster care for more than a year. They both have enough problems and history that it would’ve been very hard to find them a home last night. Especially one where they could stay together.” Miles nods again, his eyes drifting back down to his shoes. “Jessica needs more time to find a place for them, and we can give her that.”

“They’re not staying with us for good?”

Bruce’s stomach twists slightly, and he swallows around the thick feeling that rises in the back of his throat. “I don’t think so, no,” he says gently. “They’re placed with us temporarily, like you were.”

Miles releases a sound that’s somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Uh, Bruce, you guys _adopted_ me,” he points out. When he glances over again, he’s actually smiling. “That’s the opposite of temporary.”

Bruce smiles back and nudges him in the arm. “Well, they’re placed like you originally were,” he amends, and Miles grins at him. “You’re a very special case.”

“Yeah, _whatever_ , Dad,” Miles returns, and Bruce tries to ignore the way his heart beats faster at the casual, easy way Miles dropped _dad_ into the conversation.

They linger on the bench for a while longer, shoulder to shoulder as the breezy turns misty, before Miles quietly says, “I was eleven when my parents died.” When Bruce looks over at him, he’s playing with a frayed bit at the end of his jacket, his face mostly hidden from view. “Even with my uncle and everything, I— Tony said Teddy’s fifteen, right?”

“Right.”

“I can’t imagine going all that time without having a family. Going from, like, your house to another foster home to somebody else, it’d be really _bad_.” He shakes his head a little before he spares Bruce a glance. “I get why you’d want him to stay with us, instead of going somewhere with more strangers and without the one person he knows.”

Bruce smiles gently at him and reaches over to squeeze his shoulder. “I thought you’d understand,” he admits, but he leaves out the part where he’d still worried about it, anyway.

Miles grins. “If I can understand why you love Tony, I can understand anything,” he points out, and they laugh together before they head back to the car.

“I’m just saying, Miles and the big guy _alone_ can finish a whole pie, so we need at least two of them,” Tony’s saying as Bruce leads Miles into the house from the garage about twenty minutes later. His voice carries down the hall, warm and familiar; Bruce basks in it long enough that he almost misses Miles trying to sneak a bag of chips out of the pantry. He nudges him through to the kitchen, his eyebrows raised in warning, and Miles rolls his eyes as he lets Bruce lead him along.

Tony’s standing at the island when they enter, a sea of take-out menus and pizza coupons spread out in front of him like a general’s map of the frontline. Teddy stands across from him, a skeptical expression on his face as he plays with the tab on his soda can; at the breakfast nook, Amy digs into one of Dot’s discarded boxes of crayons to finish coloring in some kind of pastoral scene. The whole display’s so comfortable, so inadvertently domestic, that Bruce swears his heart swells until it’s almost choking him. When Tony glances over and smiles at them, his laugh lines crinkling, he forgets how to breathe entirely.

“See, look, my two favorite boys will agree with me on the person-to-pizza ratio,” he says, a hint of triumph in his voice as he pushes away from the island and strides over. Bruce expects he’ll just grab each of them by their jackets and grab them over, but instead, he pauses at Bruce’s side to plaster a hand to his hip and kiss him. It’s a brief kiss, more a greeting than anything else, but Bruce falls into it, his fingertips sliding along the front of Tony’s t-shirt without his permission.

“God, you never stop,” Miles complains with an eye-roll, and Tony drags him in for a one-armed hug. Miles wriggles in silent protest, a flush of embarrassment covering his face as Tony steers him toward the island; twice, he flicks a glance in Teddy’s direction, curious and shy all at once, and both times, Teddy offers him a tiny smile.

“So, here’s the debate,” Tony explains, his arm slung around Miles’s shoulder as he starts rearranging his mosaic of coupons and sauce-stained menus. “Amy and Teddy want pizza but think two pizzas is way too ambitious for five people.”

“And cheesy bread,” Amy says. Bruce glances over to find her with her arms folded on the other side of the island. She rests her chin on a wrist as she meets his eyes. “Tony said cheesy bread.”

“You know, I did say cheesy bread, and since the other little girl in my life already thinks I’m a liar who never keeps his promises, we will have a metric _ton_ of cheesy bread.” Tony snaps his fingers and winks at her, and she giggles as she hides her face behind her arm. Bruce ignores the twist in his stomach—and the brightness of Tony’s grin. “But in all seriousness, I think we need two pizzas. Three if you denied our human vacuum cleaner his after school snack.”

Miles rolls his eyes. “I’m thirteen. I’m probably going through a growth spurt.”

“I’m pretty sure no growth spurt in the world requires that you eat your weight in fruit rollups twice a week. One of these days, you’re going to puke the rainbow.” Miles groans at that, elbowing Tony in the ribs, and within seconds, their conversation devolves into arm-nudging and hasty attempts at noogies. It’s only after Miles has smacked Tony’s wrist a couple times and Tony’s wrestled him halfway out of his jacket that he ducks all the way out of his grip, grinning and breathless.

Tony grins, too, before he jerks his head in their son’s direction. “Amy and Teddy, meet our full-time kid. Miles, meet the foster kids, Amy and Teddy.”

“Hey,” Miles says, a nonchalant shrug serving as a replacement for a wave; across from him, Teddy grins and raises his hand in a sort of salutation. Tony starts talking again, babbling about pizza toppings and crust thickness, but Bruce kind of tunes out his rambling to pay attention to everything else: to Amy’s tiny, bashful smile and the way she tucks her chin onto her arms; to Teddy’s half-amused snort at one of Tony’s jokes about sausage; to the nervous way that Miles checks Teddy’s reaction after he rolls his eyes. The moment’s not tense, exactly—Miles leans against the counter as he tries to lobby for Brooklyn-style pizza, Amy reminds Tony about her cheesy bread again, Teddy smirks as he sips his soda—but it’s still tentative, all five of them balancing on separate tight ropes that somehow meet in the middle.

Bruce tries to remind himself that the feeling’s temporary—that soon, Teddy and Amy will move from their home, hopefully together, and continue on with their lives—but then all three kids laugh at one of Tony’s jokes and Bruce forgets what he’s worrying about.

After Tony walks out on the deck to order the pizza, Teddy shoves his hands in his back pockets. “I, uh, don’t know how you feel about this,” he says awkwardly, his eyes mostly trained on what’s now a crooked pile of take-out menus, “but before you came home, Tony said I could get on Skype to talk to my boyfriend. And if that’s not okay with you, I mean, it’s your house too, I just—”

“Wait, you have a boyfriend?” Miles blurts. He stops fiddling with his cell phone—probably bragging to Ganke about their dinner, as Mrs. Lee is a stickler about junk food—to stare at the boy across the island from him. A blush starts to climb up Teddy’s neck. “I mean, it’s _cool_ you have a boyfriend,” Miles clarifies with a wave of his hand, “it’s just that pretty much everyone we know is gay.”

“Miles,” Bruce warns, but Teddy’s lips start to quirk into a smile.

“No, seriously, it’s everyone,” Miles presses, ignoring Bruce when he sighs. “Dot’s dads, Phil and Clint, Tony’s assistant and her girlfriend, Clint’s friend Wade—”

“I’m pretty sure Wade isn’t gay, strictly speaking,” Bruce informs him. Teddy hides his smirk by taking a swig of his soda. “And neither is Thor, or Darcy, or—”

“That’s why I said ‘pretty much,’” the boy defends. There’s enough teenage posturing in his tone that Teddy starts laughing, his face bright and warm. Miles grins at him, obviously proud of himself, and for _once_ , Bruce lets his tiny act of defiance slide. “I can show you how to log in on the computer in the upstairs office,” he offers after a second. “If Bruce is okay with you getting on Skype, I mean.”

It’s hard to miss the note of hope in his voice, and harder still to miss it when it settles across his expression. Bruce smiles softly. “Okay,” he agrees, and his heart warms when Miles grins at him. “But everyone’s off computers and cell phones and whatever else when the pizza gets here.”

Miles waves him off to grab his backpack, and within seconds, he’s leading a still-amused Teddy up the stairs. Bruce leans his hip against the counter and watches them disappear, Miles talking with his hands while Teddy nods along with him. His chest feels uncomfortably full, like he’s proud and worried at the same time; even as the boys disappear upstairs, he can hear their voices drifting down after them.

He’s still watching the stairwell when arms snake around his waist from behind and tug him close. Bruce sighs as Tony kisses him just behind the ear and then settles there, breath tickling along his neck. “I guess that half-hour nap on the couch when you stumbled home from work did you good,” Bruce comments, his fingers tracing along Tony’s arms.

“I’m thinking of starting a twelve-step program for coffee addicts, I’m _that_ close to admitting I have a problem.” Bruce chuckles and shakes his head, but Tony just sneaks his thumb under the hem of his t-shirt and strokes his stomach. They linger like that for a moment, Tony warm enough and close enough to absorb some of Bruce’s anxiety, until Tony asks, “Miles doing okay?”

“I think so.” When he steps far enough away from Tony to turn around, Tony backs him gently into the counter and rests his hands on Bruce’s waist. Bruce knows without thinking that _this_ —the possessiveness and the touch, the little kisses and smaller smiles—is how Tony copes with his anxiety, reminding himself again and again that the people around him, they really are _his_. 

Bruce’s stomach clenches, the longer he thinks about it.

They stand together for a few long seconds, Tony’s eyes searching his face as they lean into each other, not hugging as much as leeching one another’s heat and _nearness_ —but then, Amy sighs. “You touch a lot more than Ed and Sylvie do,” she announces once they both turn to look at her. She’s still coloring, her head bent in concentration and face hidden by her curly hair. “They only hug when Ed gets home from work.”

Tony’s face splits into a grin, a sure sign that he’s planning some sort of age-inappropriate joke, so Bruce elbows him lightly. He purses his lips, his eyes still dancing. “Do you mind?” Bruce asks. “Because if it bothers you, we can touch less.”

Amy sighs, then, setting down her crayon to look over. “It’s not _bad_ ,” she says, her dark eyes sweeping back and forth between them. “It’s just funny.”

Tony frowns. “Funny how?”

“Funny that grown-ups hug as much as Billy and Teddy hug,” she replies, and Tony only releases Bruce because he can’t stop himself from laughing.

 

== 

 

“Is your boy a nice boy?” Amy asks Bruce later that night, and Bruce blinks at her. 

She’s standing in the middle of the bathroom floor, dripping wet and drowning in one of Tony’s oversized, fluffy bath towels, but her big brown eyes stare up at Bruce. He’d tried two or three times to leave the little girl alone with Dot’s excess bath toys, but every time, Amy’d found some way to draw him back into the bathroom: asking for a glass of water, complaining about soap in her eyes, not knowing how to shampoo her own hair. Bruce’d suspected after his third trip back in that she just wanted company in the strange house; when he’d sat on the floor next to the tub, she’d visibly relaxed and shampooed her mess of hair without any problems. They’d talked intermittently, mostly about why two adult men with a teenager had so many Disney toys living under their bathroom sink, and Bruce’d helped her rinse out her hair.

“What boy?” he asks after a moment.

She shrugs and looks at her bare toes. “Miles.”

“Ah,” Bruce replies. He abandons the comb—also Dot’s, as it happens—on the vanity and moves to sit on the closed toilet while Amy wraps herself further in the bath towel. All through their pizza-and-cheesy-bread dinner, he’d caught her staring across the table at Miles without speaking to him, her face twisted in intense concentration. She’d laughed at Teddy’s jokes and Tony’s antics, smiled at Bruce’s stories and at their begging, horribly behaved dogs, but Miles— She’d left Miles a wide berth.

After dinner, when Miles’d asked about it, Teddy’d shrugged. “She’s shy,” he’d explained quietly as Amy’d knelt on the couch and petted Jarvis. “I don’t know what it is, but kids around your age kind of freak her out.”

“To be fair, adolescents freak me out,” Tony’d commented, and he’d rolled his eyes at Bruce’s warning look. “I’m just saying, all those hormones and uncontrolled emotional outbursts? I’d build a moat between me and the nearest thirteen-year-old, too.”

Miles’d immediately stepped into his personal space, and he’d pretended to jump before crossing himself. Bruce’d sighed at both of them. “They’re not your audience,” he’d reminded Tony once their son’d gone to retrieve his backpack.

“Says you,” Tony’d retorted, and popped the last of his pizza crust into his mouth.

Bruce can hear Tony downstairs, his voice echoing up from the kitchen, and he chuckles a little as he motions Amy over. She slinks toward him, almost skittish, and only relaxes after he lifts the towel just enough to dry her hair. “Miles is a good boy most of the time,” he assures her. 

She frowns. “Only most the time?”

“Well, nobody’s good _all_ of the time,” Bruce explains, and she peers up at him from under her messy hair and floppy towel. “I don’t want you to think he never does anything wrong. But he’s a good kid.”

She nods, her lips pursed into a tight line. “But he’s not mean?”

“No.”

“Okay.” When Bruce stops rubbing the towel over her head, she adjusts it so it’s almost a cocoon, everything but her head and her toes wrapped up in fluffy blue. A few errant curls hang in her face, and Bruce briefly brushes them away. She smiles at him, but hesitantly. “I like your house.”

A spike of absolute warmth courses through him, and he smiles back at her. “You should tell Tony that. He picked it out.”

“It’s bigger than Ed and Sylvie’s house,” Amy continues. She turns around in front of him, facing the wall, and shakes out her hair. Bruce stares for a moment, but then she glances over her shoulder at him. “Sylvie says it hurts less if it’s wet.”

“If what’s wet?”

“My hair.” He chuckles at the tiny note of impatience in her voice as he picks up the comb; she grumbles when he immediately finds a tangle and tugs her towel tighter. “Teddy’s room is right next to mine at Ed and Sylvie’s. He shares with Tristan, though.”

Bruce pauses, the comb buried in her damp curls. He can only glimpse half of her face, but she’s staring at the random abstract art that hangs in the bathroom, studying the looping green-and-blue swirls that always remind Bruce of a stormy sea. He waits until he’s combing again to ask, “Did Jessica tell you what happened to Tristan and Ed?”

Amy’s quiet for a long few seconds before she nods. “They died.”

“And you know what that means?”

“My _abuela_ died right after I went to stay with Ed and Sylvie,” she says softly. She adjusts the towel so it covers more of her shoulders before she glances over her shoulder at him. “My mommy says that means she went to a place where nobody hurts and everybody’s happy.”

Bruce sweeps a bit of hair behind her shoulder and forces a small smile. “That’s a pretty accurate description, I think.”

“Did you ever know a dead person?” 

Bruce’s stomach clenches. “A few,” he admits. Amy raises her eyebrows, her face a mask of seven-year-old curiosity, and he gently nudges her head so he can reach the rest of her hair. “My grandparents died when I was young—younger than you. Other relatives, too—and a few friends, here and there.”

Amy nods. “Do Tony and Miles know dead people, too?”

“Yes,” Bruce replies, and the tight feeling in his chest only uncoils when Amy abruptly changes the subject to a girl in her class who is _also_ named Tony. “But with the letter I,” she explains, and he chuckles as he finishes her hair.

When they reemerge from the bathroom, Amy in the too-big pajamas from Jessica, Bruce finds Teddy and Tony in the kitchen. Amy immediately attaches herself to Teddy’s side, successfully ending a lively argument about _something_ , and Teddy grins as he ruffles her damp hair. “You look like you smell better,” he teases.

“I always smell good,” she defends. She rests her cheek against his hip and watches as Bruce pours himself a cup of coffee. He raises his eyebrows at her, and she grins. “Bruce isn’t good at hair like Sylvie,” she reports.

“Amy,” Teddy scolds, but his voice is drowned out by Tony’s laughter—and then, by Tony stealing Bruce’s coffee. Bruce rolls his eyes and swaps his full mug for Tony’s empty one. “That’s kind of rude.”

“Rude, but true,” Tony replies, leaning his hip against the counter. “The last time Dot spent the night, she looked like a tiny hobo child after her bath.”

“And when you tried to do her hair, she looked like a Halloween ghoul,” Bruce reminds him. Tony smirks as he sips his coffee. “I’m still not convinced that was an ‘accident,’ either.”

“The world may never know,” Tony defends. He toasts the air between them, and Bruce rolls his eyes again. “But the important take-away here, kiddo, is that your hair is pretty much doomed, and you’d better get used to it.”

Amy frowns, but Teddy just laughs. “You still have me,” he says, stroking a hand over her head.

Her frown deepens. “The last time you and Billy did my hair, it hurt my head.”

“Okay, well, you still have me, and I can call Kate,” Teddy amends, and Amy squints skeptically at him for a few seconds before she nods.

Tony immediately leaps into a nosy series of questions—the identity of “the mysterious” Kate, how exactly Teddy and Billy hurt Amy’s head, whether there is a special Pinterest entirely for elementary school hairstyles—and Bruce listens for a few seconds before his attention’s diverted by the sound of Dummy’s tail whacking against the wall. When he glances over, he discovers that Miles’s balled up in a chair in the living room, one hand holding open his comic book while the other strokes Dummy behind the ears. Dummy’s face is blissful, his eyes half-closed as he leans against the chair; when Miles stops petting him to turn the page, he shoves his nose under Miles’s arm.

Miles laughs at him, and Bruce can’t help his own smile. Tony gestures emphatically with his coffee mug, punctuating some point about Dot and a Hello Kitty barrette as Bruce wanders into the living room.

“Hey,” he says, and his heart warms when Miles glances up from his comic book and smiles. He looks small for a moment, burrowed halfway under a blanket like he is, and Bruce moves to sit on the arm of the chair. “You finish your homework?”

Miles rolls his eyes. “I’m not eight.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

He groans. “ _Yes_ , I finished,” he replies indulgently, and looks back down at his comic. They sit together for a few minutes, Miles reading silently and Bruce sipping his coffee, before he adds, “They’re okay.”

Bruce glances over at him. “Teddy and Amy?”

“Yeah. I mean, she’s really shy, but—” He shakes his head slightly, his eyes still focused down on the book. “You didn’t know me right after my mom and dad died, but it was _really_ hard,” he says quietly, and Bruce feels his chest clench. “I probably drove everybody crazy, and I know Uncle Aaron was— Anyway, all this horrible stuff happened to them, and they seem okay, right now.” He casts his eyes up at Bruce and shrugs. “I think that’d be hard.”

“I think so too,” Bruce agrees. He reaches down to squeeze Miles’s shoulder, and Miles smiles before he turns back to his book. He waits until the boy’s read through a few more pages before he asks, “Are you sure you’re all right with them staying here for a few more days?”

Miles rolls his lips together. “Depends,” he says after the briefest of pauses.

Bruce swallows. “On what?”

“On whether you’re going to buy me the next volume of this comic for saying yes,” he replies, and when Bruce sighs, his son grins at him.

 

==

 

That night, after all three children are tucked into three separate beds and their house is dark and quiet, Tony pins Bruce against the bedroom door and fumbles for his belt. Bruce protests for a moment, the words _kids_ and _Tony_ falling from his lips like the clumsy first attempts at a foreign language, but Tony mutters something about stress relief and quiets him with a kiss. They stumble around the bedroom, Tony’s hands shoving Bruce’s clothes out of the way and Bruce throwing Tony’s t-shirt onto the floor before falling into each other and then, onto their bed.

He feels like Tony’s everywhere, his breath and his mouth as warm and greedy as his hands, his hips rolling against Bruce’s as they grope first at denim and then, at bare skin, and Bruce muffles his keening noises of _want_ by pressing his face against Tony’s shoulder. All his anxieties, his fears, his worries unravel as Tony moans into Bruce’s mouth and threads his fingers through Bruce’s hair, and as he bucks his hips up and pants _please_ into the half-darkness of their bedroom. Everything in the world narrows until there’s nothing but the familiar pace of the two of them, together in their bed, Tony’s fingers scrabbling for purchase as Bruce plucks him apart. Bruce loses himself to those long minutes, bowing to kiss Tony’s shoulder, his neck, his chin, his scar, their rhythm uneven and greedy but perfect all the same. Tony grips his hair in one hand, the back of his thigh in the other, and when he falls apart against Bruce’s palm it’s with Bruce’s name on his lips. 

Bruce immediately follows him down.

But hours later, he walks downstairs in his ancient bathrobe to the sound of the autumn wind howling just behind the back door. When he nudges the guest room door open, he discovers that Teddy’s sprawled out on the bed, his mouth hanging open—and that a smaller body is bundled up on the floor, cocooned in the blanket from the upstairs office like she’d cocooned herself in her bath towel.

Bruce watches them for a few minutes, both blissfully asleep and _safe_ in the late-night quiet.

When he comes back to bed, Tony spoons up behind him and wraps an arm around his waist. “They’re okay,” he says, his breath warm against the back of Bruce’s shoulder. “All of them, everybody in this house, we’re all okay.”

“I know,” Bruce replies, and tangles their fingers together.

 

== 

 

“Can I talk to you?” Steve Rogers asks the next afternoon, and Bruce glances away from the window and the half-hearted September rain.

The morning’d dawned gray and dreary—“blustery,” according to A.A. Milne characters—and for some reason, the office feels just about as dismal as the weather. Just in the last half-hour, Natasha’s snapped at Jane over a missing case file, Maria and Phil have bickered loudly about an upcoming trial, Darcy’s threatened to quit, and Bucky’s spilled coffee down the front of his shirt. Bruce’d actually saved him from that indignity, digging out his spare dress shirt from the bag in his office and handing it over. “I don’t know if it’ll fit,” he’d said sympathetically, “but it’s something.”

“Better than showing up to court like _this_ ,” Bucky’d returned, and Bruce’d grimaced as he’d realized just how much coffee’d seeped into his friend’s white dress shirt.

“If it’s about the shirt,” Bruce tells Steve, “that really was my only spare.”

Steve chuckles. “No, Buck looks pretty good in purple,” he replies, and Bruce forces a little smile as his friend shuts the door behind him.

Truth be told, the quiet, downtrodden mood’s seeped into Bruce’s pores as much as it has everybody else’s, leaving him a little rudderless as he digs through his stack of files for next week’s hearings. He’s spent most of the last five hours alone in his office, fingers tangled in his hair as he’s highlighted social worker reports and struggled to ignore his cell phone and e-mail. He’s not worried, exactly, but he’s not _comfortable_ either; even as Steve clears off the chair across from his desk and sits down, he feels a tiny seed of anxiety settling in the back of his throat.

The plan, hatched the night before and approved (through hasty text-messages) by Jessica Jones, had been to maintain Teddy and Amy’s routines as much as possible by sending them back to school on Friday morning. But when Bruce’d woken them up, the rain hammering against the siding and the wind scraping tree branches against the windows, Amy’d burrowed herself in her blankets, shy and immediately teary. “No,” she’d said stubbornly, and Bruce’d watched a half-awake Teddy rub sleep from his eyes. “I don’t want to go today.”

“You can’t just stay here,” Teddy’d said warily. He’d scooted to the end of the bed, but Amy’d just tucked herself up into a ball and pulled the blanket over her head. “Amy, Bruce and Tony have jobs, and our teachers miss us, we can’t—”

“You go, but I don’t want to,” Amy’d broke in, and Teddy’d sent Bruce an apologetic look as he’d sighed.

“So we’ll let her stay home,” Tony’d said a few minutes later, bundled in his robe and drinking coffee, his hair still damp from the shower. Bruce’d massaged his temple, already exhausted an hour after waking, but Tony’d just reached forward and planted a hand on his hip. “I’ll swing by her school and pick up her homework, Pepper can send me the brief I’m working on, and we’ll just have a work-from-home party here while you dig through case files and— What do you do at work, again? I forget.”

Bruce’d rolled his eyes, but he’d accepted a few hungry swallows from Tony’s mug when he’d held it out in a silent offering. “She can’t miss school indefinitely,” he’d pointed out.

“No, but she can miss two days. They kind of had a traumatic experience. If she’s not ready to head back, what’ll it really hurt?”

“You never say that when I don’t want to go to school,” Miles’d pointed out from behind his giant bowl of cereal.

“Because _you_ are learning pre-algebra and biological sciences, not basic addition and spelling,” Tony’d retorted, and Bruce’d sighed as he headed upstairs to shower.

Tony’s only updates from home have come in the form of explanation-free cell phone photos, including one of Amy asleep on the couch with Jarvis curled up in the crook of her knees. The picture’s still open on Bruce’s computer—his Blackberry struggles with large file downloads and Tony refuses to compress his pictures down to a manageable size—and Steve smiles when he notices it. “That’s the little girl?” he asks.

Bruce nods. “Amy.”

“She looks like she’s around Dot’s age.”

Bruce glances at the picture again, and at Amy’s halo of dark hair on the couch pillow. “She just turned seven.”

Steve’s smile softens like he’s imagining his own daughter at seven, and he shakes his head a little as he looks over at Bruce. “You know, if she needs somebody her age to play with, Dot’s always available,” he offers with a shrug. “We’re still figuring out the politics of kindergarten play dates, but with you and Tony—”

“Thanks,” Bruce cuts in, “but I don’t think they’ll be with us very long.” Steve rolls his lips together, his expression vaguely guilty, and Bruce sighs. “Let me guess: Tony told you otherwise?”

“He just said you two hadn’t decided if you were keeping them long-term.” When Bruce chuckles and shakes his head, Steve cringes. “I need to start taking what Tony says with a bigger grain of salt.”

“I recommend a whole salt lick,” Bruce replies. Steve forces a little smile at that. “What can I do for you? I know I skipped lunch, but I’m behind because of yesterday, nothing to—” 

“This isn’t an intervention,” Steve promises, raising his hands, and Bruce lifts both his eyebrows. “It’s not. I mean, we worried a little when we heard that you actually went to the scene of the fire the other night, but no one thinks skipping lunch is a sign of existential crisis.” He pauses. “Unless you’re Clint.”

“To be fair, Clint Barton’s a walking existential crisis,” Bruce returns, and this time, Steve’s smile is warm and genuine. Bruce smiles back at him and finally stops toying with his wrist watch. “But seriously, what do you need? You usually don’t come in here unless we’re charging someone with child abuse or Tony’s tormented you, and since Tony’s not here . . . ” He trails off, expecting Steve to chime in immediately, but instead, the other man shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He rubs the side of his neck for a moment, the discomfort plain on his open face, and Bruce frowns. “Steve?”

Steve swallows thickly, his throat bobbing as he folds his hands between his knees. “I’m actually here about your foster kids—or at least, about the fire.”

“The fire,” Bruce repeats. His voice sounds distant and breathless, almost unrecognizable. When he casts his eyes over at the picture of Amy, he discovers that his screen’s gone into power saving mode. He stares at the black rectangle for a moment before he replies, “Jessica hasn’t updated us about it.”

“I know,” Steve says quickly. “I don’t actually have much more information than anyone else, but the preliminary reports started coming in this morning. They’re still investigating, and the crime lab’ll take weeks to process what the detectives sent over, but right now, they’re calling it suspicious.”

Bruce rolls his lips together. “Meaning arson.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly. Bruce nods dumbly, his head and stomach both swimming as the man across from him drags fingers through his hair. “I just thought, since they’re living with you two, you should know.”

Bruce nods again, a little helplessly. His attempt at a smile feels mostly like an afterthought or a clumsy twitch. “Thanks,” he replies, and he looks back out the window.

He expects Steve to stand, leaving him there with the spitting rain and the tempest in his head, but instead, he stays. Bruce watches him out of the corner of his eye, his head tipping back against the wall as he too looks out the window, and for a while, they both stare out at the rain. Bruce tries to think of something to fill the silence, but his chest feels tight and his mouth clumsy; he thinks instead of other people’s children (Jordan Silva-Riberio, Kate Bishop, his own son) and the crimes that changed their lives, too. 

He’s still studying the fat raindrops when Steve remarks, “You’re the best thing that could happen to them, you know.” Bruce frowns as he glances over, his brow furrowing, but his friend just shrugs. “You and Tony together, you’ve been through every type of adversity there is and you’ve come out swinging. And more than that, you’re some of the best parents I’ve ever met.” Bruce snorts a little, his face warming without his permission while the corner of Steve’s mouth kicks up in a grin. “If anyone can handle these kids, it’s you two.”

“Let’s see what Tony’s like after eight hours with a first-grader before we jump to that conclusion,” Bruce says.

This time, Steve’s grin reaches his eyes. “Knowing Tony, it’ll involve a lot of glitter,” he returns, and Bruce, despite everything else, laughs at that.

 

==

 

“Look, I’m being a realist,” Jessica says the next afternoon as she leans on deck railing, “and right now, realism means splitting them up.”

The Friday rain and gloom’d segued into sun and a warm breeze for Saturday, a miraculous weather transformation that’d led the local newscasters to throw around terms like _Indian summer_ and _global climate change_ without any kind of irony. Bruce’d woken up to a room full of sunshine and an empty bed, and for a long time he’d just laid there, listening to Tony’s laughter echo up from the kitchen. When he’d finally found his pajama pants and wandered downstairs, he’d discovered his husband holding court with all three children in front of a giant box of doughnuts.

“We always do doughnuts on Saturday,” Miles’d said immediately, and Bruce’d sighed as he’d scrubbed a hand over his face. By the time he’d walked over to the island, Tony’d poured him a cup of coffee _and_ selected a double chocolate doughnut for him. “Ever since I moved in with you, except that one time we had oatmeal.”

“And let’s never talk about that dark day again,” Tony’d said solemnly, and he’d crossed himself as Amy’d giggled.

But now Tony’s at the dog park with both dogs and Amy, Miles is finishing a school project over at Ganke’s, and the whole house feels like a yawning cavern, too empty and too quiet. Teddy’d hung around the living room with Bruce for the first half-hour of silence, catching up on his missed schoolwork while Bruce’d run through a few more files for Monday, but then Jessica’d arrived with another giant duffel bag. “More clothes, some various toiletries—and my boss is _super_ happy that I’ve stolen all the no-tangle shampoo, I’m sure—and a special present,” she’d explained, unzipping a side pouch. Teddy’d almost dropped the prepaid cell phone she’d tossed his way, but his face’d lit up like a sunny summer morning. “There’s five hundred minutes on that,” she’d said as he’d flipped it open. “Do not use all of them this weekend.”

Teddy’d wrapped her up in a giant bear hug before heading outside to call his friends. Bruce’d ignored the warm feeling swimming around in his stomach by pouring Jessica a cup of coffee.

She’s sipping that coffee now, idly watching as Teddy sits on the edge of the pool with his feet dangling and chats animatedly with someone. Bruce rolls his lips together and studies the side of her face. “You haven’t found another placement?” he asks.

She snorts. “For Amy, I have a half-dozen,” she says, her hair falling over her shoulder as she glances in his direction. “None of them in this county, but when intake calls about adorable little girls with learning disabilities, foster parents jump over themselves to find air mattresses. But Teddy?” She shakes her head. “The boys’ home in Warren County’ll have room at the end of the month if I can’t pull strings with a local shelter.”

Bruce frowns. “You can’t find an actual home for him?”

“He disrupts,” Jessica reminds him. Her eyes track back to the blond teen perched on the edge of the pool. His face lights up in a grin when he realizes she’s watching; when he waves, both she and Bruce wave back. “He’s snuck out of the Suffolk County shelter before,” she admits, her voice quieter than before. “Union County’s pretty full, and we’ve got a couple kids who are about to finish their stints in juvenile detention and have first dibs when a spot opens up. I spent weeks convincing the Pierponts they could handle him. I’m not sure I can convince anyone else.” She runs her fingernail across the lip of the House Targaryen coffee mug. “There’s one family who’s about to adopt their eleven-year-old foster kid who’d maybe agree,” she says after a moment, “but they’re on the other side of Union County, an hour-plus from everything these kids know, and—” 

“Amy’s afraid of kids around that age, anyway.” Jessica whips her head around to stare at Bruce, and he shrugs slightly. “She’s been avoiding Miles. Teddy says she’s spooked by anyone who’s in that sort of pre- and early-teen age range. It’ll just be trading one fear for another.”

Jessica’s expression tightens slightly, her eyes narrowing even as the rest of her face is a mask of controlled confusion. Bruce frowns and grips his own coffee mug tighter as his stomach clenches. He feels like he’s waiting for something—a punch line, a warning, a question—but he can’t place what.

He’s about to break the silence when Jessica says, “Amy’s never told me that.”

“No?” 

“No,” she replies, and sips her coffee.

Bruce relays the highlights of the conversation to Tony once he’s back from the dog park and sitting, barefoot, on the kitchen island. Outside, Amy plays fetch with the still-energetic dogs, laughing as they run laps around her and the rest of the yard. He’s still rambling through all of it—the Warren County group home, the strangers in Union County, the possibility of splitting them up—when Tony interrupts with a quiet, “Hey.”

Bruce tears his eyes away from the window just as Tony reaches for his shirt, and within seconds, he’s standing in front of Tony at the island, his hands on Tony’s thighs as Tony hooks a leg around him. Tony’s hands run over his shoulders, his neck, his hair, a conversation all its own, and Bruce only realizes how tightly he’s holding his body when he starts to unwind. In the comfortable silence of the kitchen, he leans his forehead against Tony’s arm for a second, and Tony leans down to push his nose and mouth into Bruce’s hair.

“You dodged all my questions about cute little orphan kids back before our son was our son, so let me ask again,” he murmurs close to Bruce’s ear, and Bruce snorts even as he closes his eyes. “How much of this worry right now’s about six-year-old Bruce Banner?”

Bruce swallows. “She slept on the guest room floor again last night,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, but see, that’s not the question.” Tony leans back far enough that Bruce is forced to lift his head. When he meets Tony’s eyes, Tony raises both eyebrows. “Because I’m clearly fine with them staying here for six more days, or weeks, or even months, but you’re the one who’s been raising a readiness red flag since the first time I needled you about more foster kids. And if you’re only caving because these kids are right here, right now, and you remember being in their position— Well, even though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fall in love with both your good heart _and_ your fabulous ass, your good heart’s no reason to hold onto two kids you’re not sure about.” 

His thumb strokes along Bruce’s jaw, his callus rough but familiar, and Bruce sighs. “You’re not tiny Bruce,” Tony reminds him, “and neither are they.”

They stand there for a long time, the echoes of Amy’s laughter and the dogs’ playful barking trailing in through the open back door, before Bruce says, “I don’t know if I can send them to two different homes. At least, not in good conscience.” 

Tony nods. “Then okay,” he says, and slides his fingers through Bruce’s hair.

 

==

 

Late that night—after dinner, dessert, and a movie, after Mario Kart battles and a few loads of laundry, and after Miles’s showed off his history project to all who will listen—Miles asks, “Hey, Bruce?”

He’s curled in his bed, his phone still glowing from some mobile game or text message, and Bruce pauses in the doorway, his hand already on the doorknob. The almost summery night breeze sweeps through the room, sweet-smelling and warm as it rustles the drapes. The silver stars that dot Miles’s ceiling seem to glow in the light that seeps in from the hallway, but for a moment, it’s just the two of them: Bruce, and the boy who made him a father.

Bruce swallows around the lump of nerves that suddenly crawls into his throat. “Yeah?”

“I just— I was telling Ganke about Teddy and Amy, and about the fire and everything,” Miles says, his voice quiet and almost distant in the dark of his bedroom. “And the more I thought about it, the more I kind of . . . ”

He trails off, shaking his head slightly, and Bruce rolls his lips together. “The more you what?” he asks gently.

Miles shrugs and burrows a little further under the covers. “I think it’s better that they be safe here than scared somewhere else, is all.”

Bruce’s stomach twists, and for a moment, he forgets how to breathe. His fingers grip the doorknob as he nods. “Okay,” he says dumbly.

“Okay,” Miles replies, and Bruce stands there a long time before he actually shuts the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KayQy drew a wonderful picture of our Amy, which can be found [here](http://kayquimi.tumblr.com/post/88140491772/a-very-big-scan-of-a-very-small-doodle-sorry-so).
> 
> The most recent MPU posting schedule can be found [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/87757474682/but-kate-i-thought-degrees-of-consanguinity-was).
> 
> And Jen's added some links to the MPU blog she curates, so if you've not visited lately, [check it out](http://thempuniverse.tumblr.com/)!


	5. Soft Touches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, a visit from detectives sets Bruce’s nerves on edge—and sparks several other conversations. The end result is a tense discussion, a lie of omission, and a decision that Bruce still can’t verbalize.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for the relatively brief discussion of the death of an adult. 
> 
> I am not entirely sure that a foster parent can act as a guardian for the purposes of a minor speaking to the police, but let's all just smile and nod at my limited knowledge of juvenile offender law. The important part is that there is a grown-up in the room.
> 
> Replies to last chapter's comments will be delayed until sometime this weekend. Sorry!
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who catch all my stupid errors and inability to spell, you know, commonly used words.

“No,” Bruce says, raising his hands. “Absolutely not. Not tonight.”

Pin-drop silence blankets the living room, too heavy and suffocating to be real, and Bruce only hears the note of anger in his voice after the fact. He drags fingers through his hair and forces himself to draw in a slow, steady breath. Sitting in one of the oversized armchairs, Detective Ororo Munroe presses her lips into a thin, unfriendly line; behind her, standing sentry by the open back door, Detective James Howlett crosses his arms over his broad chest. The cool evening breeze shifts the blinds on their windows, but otherwise, the quiet endures.

On the couch, Teddy swallows. “It’s okay,” he says, but his voice shakes. He wipes his eyes on the side of his hand and forces a small smile in Bruce’s direction. “I’m fine, I promise.”

“It’s not okay,” Bruce retorts, and he feels his jaw clench.

The detectives had arrived after dinner, each of them wearing comfortable street clothes and uncomfortable expressions, and Bruce’s heart had sunk into his stomach the second he held open the front door. They’d smiled politely as they crossed the threshold, Howlett nodding a greeting while Munroe’d wiped her feet, but the tension alone had threatened to choke Bruce and leave him for dead. Still, he’d smiled too, leading them down the hallway and into the living room and ignoring the way his pulse’d echoed in his ear. 

“Shit, shit, shit, stay on the track,” Tony’d sworn as they’d entered, his whole body jerking as Donkey Kong plunged off the edge of Rainbow Road. Teddy’d cackled as he’d zipped past the scene of the accident before his character joined Tony’s in the starry abyss, leaving Miles to take the lead, and Amy’d laughed so hard she almost tumbled off the arm of the couch. For a moment, Bruce’d lingered in the hallway, watching the four of them together like a cohesive unit.

Then, he’d cleared his throat, Tony’d paused the game, and everything’d changed.

Only Bruce and Teddy remain in the living room now, Teddy armed with a half-destroyed tissue and Bruce pacing slightly behind the empty arm chair, his fingers idly twisting his ring for lack of a better distraction. The teen wrings and then loosens his grip on the tissue in his hands as he stares at the floor. His face is young and soft, betraying his broad shoulders and square jaw; a boy in a man’s body, Bruce thinks, and his stomach churns.

“Did Sylvia,” Teddy starts, but the words catch. He swallows audibly before glancing over at the detectives. “Did she— I mean, did it hurt? At the end? When she—”

“They kept her sedated,” Munroe breaks in. Her accent softens the words, but Teddy still flinches slightly. “She felt very little. They said it was peaceful when she passed.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Teddy, if you’re willing to talk to us, then—”

“It’s not entirely his call,” Bruce interrupts, and the detective’s jaw tightens as she presses her lips shut. Behind her, Howlett casts his eyes at the ceiling in what Bruce suspects is a silent sigh. “You come here, you tell them their foster mother died—”

“Bruce,” Teddy says quietly.

“—and now you want to interview him? I’m sorry, Ororo, but you can’t expect me to let you grill a fifteen-year-old right after you bring him this kind of bad news.” Teddy shifts his weight on the couch, his grip on the tissue tightening, and Bruce shakes his head. “Come back tomorrow, or Tuesday, but right now, I don’t think—”

The words escape him, slipping through his open hands like grains of sand, and he stares down at the back of the empty chair instead of answering. For a brief, terrifying second, Bruce wants to lash out at Munroe and Howlett, to force them out the door and barricade the house behind them. He imagines Tony down in the living room with them, his arms spread as he shouts at them to leave, and he almost smiles. 

But Tony’s upstairs with Miles and Amy, and probably comforting both of them.

“Scrabble and ice cream,” Tony’d announced once he’d shut off the Wii and the television, and when Miles’d stayed rooted to his spot on the couch, he’d elbowed their son in the ribs. Even after standing, though, Miles had lingered next to the couch, his gaze drifting between Bruce, Amy, Teddy, and the two detectives. Bruce had tried to nod supportively, holding onto a warm, forced smile even when the cold hand of dread threatened to choke him; Miles had nodded back, swallowing nervously the whole time. 

In the end, Tony’d shooed him up the stairs with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and two spoons. And while Amy’d climbed into Teddy’s lap and half-hid her face in his t-shirt, Tony’d walked over to Bruce and slung an arm around his waist.

“I’m going to distract our actual kid with super unhealthy treats and words that don’t exist in the English language,” he’d murmured, his lips close to Bruce’s ear and his tone light enough that Bruce’d nearly snorted a laugh. “You need me, or him, or both of us, you holler and I’m here. Faster than a speeding bullet.”

Somehow, Bruce’d managed a smile. “You’re not Superman.”

“You sure about that?” Tony’d retorted, and he’d planted a tiny kiss on Bruce’s temple before bounding up the stairs to join their son.

He’d only reappeared after Munroe broke the news that Sylvia Pierpont had died—and even then, only after Amy’d burst into helpless, panicked sobs.

Tony’d bundled her in a blanket and carried her upstairs, her face against his shoulder and Miles trailing after, and the detectives—

“Doctor Banner,” Munroe says gently, and Bruce sighs as he glances back at her. She’s dressed in dark jeans and a t-shirt, but she still sits like an officer: square shoulders, strong posture, her notebook tucked under her thigh. “I know this is not ideal. I don’t want to do this anymore than you want me to. But talking to Teddy now will help him remember later, and we might need that.”

“Bruce, it’s okay,” Teddy says. He ditches his tissue on the coffee table and sits up straighter, his jaw and shoulders tightening. Raw determination flashes across his expression when he smiles, and Bruce’s heart clenches. “I’m not going to sleep much tonight, anyway. I might as well answer their questions, especially if it’ll help the investigation.”

The corner of Munroe’s mouth twists in silent victory, but Bruce drags his fingers through his hair again. “By the time Jessica gets here—”

“We don’t need Miss Jones for this,” Munroe interrupts. She shrugs slightly. “A foster parent can stand in as a guardian the same way a caseworker can. As long as someone who acts as his parent is sitting in on the interview, we can go forward.” She pauses, rolling her lips together. “If you’re willing.”

Teddy glances over at him, his eyes still red-rimmed from crying. Bruce thinks there’s some small measure of quiet terror lurking under all that bravery, but when Teddy sets his jaw, he knows it’s a losing battle. He nods then, his throat thick and sticky when he swallows; Teddy releases a long, shaky breath of relief, but he smiles, too.

“If the questions go too far,” Bruce says, rounding the chair to sit down, “the interview’s over.”

“Consider this a conversation rather than an interview,” Munroe replies, and she picks up her pen.

The detectives start with easy, open-ended questions about Teddy’s life with the Pierponts: how long he lived there, his morning routine, his relationship with each of the adults, his relationship with Tristan. Munroe handles most of the talking, her pen occasionally scratching against the notebook as Teddy discusses his favorite breakfast cereals and his games of pick-up basketball against Tristan and his other sixth-grade friends; Howlett chimes in occasionally, his sarcasm coaxing surprised snorts of laughter out of the team. They traipse toward the evening of the fire in a practiced rhythm, the ease of two detectives who have worked together for ages, and Bruce falls into the pace of their questions and Teddy’s half-lazy answers. He tries to focus on the content of the conversation, to memorize the sequence of events like he’s preparing a case, but his mind drifts during the pauses, tripping back decades as he listens to Teddy shrug his way through another response.

He remembers a broad-shouldered detective with huge teeth and humorless eyes sliding him a box of raisins and a glass of lukewarm orange juice. The uncomfortable couch squeaked every time he moved, springs poking him through his pajamas. The detective’d smelled like cigarette smoke under cheap cologne as he leaned forward, asking impossible questions: how much did his father drink? Had his father hit his mother before? Had his mother ever called the police? Could he remember what his father said before he hit her?

He remembers staring at the woman on the raisin box until his vision blurred, repeating the same answer over and over: _If I tell you, can I see my mom?_

To this day, he can’t stomach the sight of raisins.

Right now, Teddy complains about Charles Dickens and earns a chuckle from Munroe.

“What about that evening?” Munroe asks, and for the first time in the last ten or fifteen minutes, Teddy’s face darkens. He looks down at where his hands are folded between his knees. “You said you did your homework and started watching a movie. What happened after that?”

He shrugs lightly. “I helped put Amy to bed.”

“You helped?” Howlett asks, raising his eyebrows. Teddy nods jerkily and picks at a hangnail. “I would’ve figured that’s more the parent’s job, not yours.”

“Usually, but not with Amy,” Teddy replies. Both detectives stare at him until he glances up, and he scrubs a hand through his messy blond hair. “I don’t know the whole story,” he explains, “but I guess a couple months before I moved in, Amy started this whole thing about not wanting to sleep alone. She likes me a lot, so most nights, I went in and helped put her to bed. Brushed her hair, read her a story, whatever.” He shrugs again. “We read _Stone Soup_ and I showed her some funny cat videos on my phone. We left her around nine-thirty, I think.”

“We?” Munroe asks.

“Ed and I.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I, uh, don’t always sleep well,” Teddy admits after a couple seconds. He toys idly with one of earrings before shaking his head. “Ed and Sylvia didn’t care as long as I didn’t wake Amy and Tristan up, so I went back downstairs to finish the movie.”

“What movie?” Munroe presses.

“ _Inception_.” Howlett releases a low whistle, and Teddy’s face breaks into a surprised grin. “What?”

“You understand that shit?” the detective demands. Munroe glances over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing, but he waves her off with a big hand. “Kurt—you met him, skinny guy with the tight jeans—dragged me to see it back when it came out. I still don’t know what happened at the end of it.”

Munroe rolls her eyes. “This,” she says, jabbing her pen over her shoulder, “is what I have to work with.”

Teddy laughs, and for the first time since the interview started, Bruce feels the tension in his own shoulders start to uncoil. The teen shrugs a little as he settles back against the couch cushion. “I mostly watch it for Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt,” he admits, his cheeks reddening slightly.

Howlett chuckles, but Munroe nods appreciatively. “Good taste,” she praises, and this time, Teddy’s whole face flares red. He rubs the side of his neck, and even Bruce can’t hide his tiny smile. “You do anything else during the movie?” 

Teddy frowns slightly. “Like what?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she replies, gesturing lightly with her pen hand. “Read a little more Dickens, do a crossword puzzle, eat a snack?”

For a moment, Teddy rolls his lips together, his eyes darting back down to his hands; Bruce thinks he looks guilty, or at least nervous, until he shrugs his broad shoulders. “I mean, not really. I texted a couple people. Billy and Kate, mostly.”

“Billy and Kate have last names?” Howlett asks, resting his arms on the back of Munroe’s chair.

“Billy Kaplan—he’s my boyfriend, he lives in Sanctuary Park—and Kate Bishop.”

“Kate Bishop?” Munroe repeats, blinking. Behind her, Howlett rolls his lips together to hide his smile, but his laugh escapes as a strangled snort. When Munroe glances in Bruce’s direction, he raises his eyebrows. “Did you know about this?”

“Know about Kate Bishop?” Bruce asks, frowning.

“Know that your foster son texts Kate Bishop, yes.”

“Oh, man, I’m glad I came on this call,” Howlett says under his breath. Munroe twists to shoot him a warning glance, and Bruce worries momentarily that she might stab him with her pen.

“I know Kate got in a lot of trouble this summer,” Teddy cuts in. He holds up his hands in a placating gesture, but there’s worry evident on his face and in the gentle slump of his shoulders. “But she’s doing better. She goes to all our group therapy sessions and all her community service hours, and the last time she almost broke curfew, it was because she was picking me and America up after the bus stopped running.”

Howlett snorts again. Munroe massages her temple lightly. “You run with America Chavez, too?”

“I don’t— It’s not _running_ ,” Teddy clarifies. Munroe frowns as she scribbles something down on her notepad, and Bruce watches as Teddy’s stubborn determination slowly slips away. He drops his hands back into his lap; after a moment, he snags the tissue off the coffee table and twists it again. “She’s my friend,” he says quietly, and Munroe briefly stops writing. “I’ve moved a lot and spent a lot of time in shelters, but I’ve always had my friends.”

Bruce purses his lips, his chest tightening slightly, but Munroe just nods. “Okay,” she replies. When she lifts her head, she offers Teddy a small, warm smile. “What happened after you fell asleep?”

“You dream about dreaming?” Howlett suggests, smirking.

Teddy snorts a little and shakes his head. “No,” he replies, but darkness creeps across his face. “No, the next thing I remember is waking up to the smell of smoke.”

The detectives stay for another ten or fifteen minutes, carefully walking Teddy through the final set of questions. Teddy handles them as best he can, his voice trembling slightly as he worries the tissue in a big hand or drags shaky fingers through his hair: no, he couldn’t tell where the fire started; no, he didn’t hear anything suspicious; yes, he looked for Amy first, but only because her room was closest to the stairs. He wipes his eyes a few times, his face tipped down toward the floor even as he answers. Bruce almost stops the interview several times in those last few minutes, sitting forward in the armchair and raising a hand, but every time, Teddy shakes his head and keeps talking.

Bruce wants to praise his bravery, but the words stick in his throat. Instead, he touches Teddy’s shoulder as they walk the detectives to the front door, and Teddy leans against him while offering him a brief, damp smile.

They stand on the front porch together as Munroe’s patrol car pulls around the circle driveway, their shoulders almost brushing. “If it’s okay,” Teddy says once the glowing taillights disappear down the block, “I want to call Billy.”

Bruce glances over at him. His broad shoulders are loose, almost slumped, and he hides his hands in his pockets. Bruce smiles softly. “You don’t want to see Amy?” he asks.

“I do, but—” He releases a huff of breath and shakes his head. “I just need a couple minutes to not be a big brother right now. I—”

His voice catches, and he swallows thickly. Casting his eyes up at the porch light just reveals how wet and lost they are. 

Bruce touches his shoulder again. He half expects the boy to pull away and brick up a brave teenage façade, but instead, he leans some of his weight against Bruce’s side. Bruce wonders when the last time someone besides Amy hugged him. “We’ll take care of Amy,” he promises, and Teddy nods jerkily. “I’ll check on you before we all head to bed, okay?”

“Okay,” Teddy agrees, and he only steps away from Bruce when they part ways in the stairwell.

It’s quiet upstairs aside from the soft strains of music carrying in from the master bedroom, and Bruce pauses in the hallway, just listening. He’d spent more than half his life living alone, basking in the silence of an empty apartment or condo, but now, the silence feels eerie, almost surreal. Most Sunday nights, Miles bangs around looking for clean laundry while Tony needles their friends with ridiculous text messages or edits his appellate briefs; most Sunday nights, Bruce ends up sitting on the deck with Miles while they run a load of t-shirts for the next morning, talking about space or science or the latest age-inappropriate episode of _Game of Thrones_.

After the better part of twenty years on his own, Bruce’s learned to enjoy even this new, headier madness: Tony and Miles bickering about the proper grass-mowing procedures, Dummy and Butterfingers annoying Teddy as he tries to read on the deck, Amy helping him pick green beans in the garden. He’s discovered strange joys like teaching a seven-year-old how to snap the ends off beans, the screaming laughter of his son as he pitches Tony’s Mario Kart character off the edge of a the cart track in Wario’s gold mine, a quiet half-hug with a fifteen-year-old on the front porch. He’s different now, and not just because Tony proposed to him one random Thursday afternoon.

He thinks of the Pierponts, of Teddy tucking in his foster sister and smiling quietly at the parents who would’ve kept him until he reached eighteen, and his heart sinks.

He scrubs a hand over his face before he nudges open the bedroom door.

The room’s dark aside from the glow of their barely-used television, the Technicolor light flickering on three familiar faces sitting against the headboard of Bruce and Tony’s bed. A cartoon Robin Hood runs from King John’s men, his fox tail flicking behind him as he and his merry men break up the King’s tournament. Miles stares at the screen, his expression more confused than rapt; next to him, Tony snickers as his arm drifts along the side of a soft brown bundle.

Except the bundle’s actually Amy, wrapped up in a throw blanket from the linen closet and asleep against Tony’s shoulder.

Bruce’s chest seizes, and for a moment, he can hardly breathe.

“Hey,” Miles says suddenly, noticing him for the first time, and he scoots over closer to Tony so there’s a sliver of space for Bruce on the edge of the bed. Bruce raises an eyebrow at him, and he sighs. “I’m not cuddling with him,” he complains as he slides closer to Tony.

“You know, I take it on very good authority that I’m an excellent cuddler,” Tony retorts. He breaks into a grin when Miles elbows him, and it only brightens when Bruce walks over and settles onto the edge of the bed. He ignores Miles’s eye-roll to reach around and stroke the back of Bruce’s neck. Bruce’s shoulders unclench at the simple touch. “Everything turn out okay? Because I thought about checking on you, but then the barnacle fell asleep, and well—”

Tony shifts his weight slightly, and Amy releases an irritated noise as she wriggles closer to him. He tips his head down toward her, his smile soft and sweet, and Bruce feels his chest clench all over again. He watches them for a minute—Tony brushing Amy’s hair out of her face as Amy sighs against his shoulder—before he shakes his head. “They wanted to talk to Teddy about what happened that night,” he explains quietly. “I tried to talk them out of it, but I think he wanted to get it over with.”

Tony nods. “That’s kind of what I figured, yeah,” he replies. His eyes look darker in the shifting light from the television. “He handle it okay?”

“As well as he could, I think.” Tony’s thumb drifts against the soft hairs at the back of his neck before he adds, “He’s friends with Kate Bishop.”

Tony snorts hard enough that Amy grumbles against his t-shirt. “Wait until Barton hears about that one. He’ll want to napalm this house just to discourage her from popping up at all our office barbecues.”

Miles finally drags his eyes away from the movie to glance between the two of them. “Is Kate that girl who sort of stalks Clint sometimes?” 

“‘Stalks’ makes the relationship sound mildly healthy,” Tony replies. 

Bruce rolls his eyes. “She works with Wade and sometimes . . . visits Clint unexpectedly, yes.”

“Is she hot?”

Tony laughs, this time, his teeth flashing shark-like in the mostly dark bedroom. When he releases Bruce’s neck, it’s to reach over and rub his hand across the crown of Miles’s head; Miles ducks his touch before clambering across Bruce’s lap and half-falling out of the bed. “It’s just a question!” he defends, but even in the dark, Bruce can tell he’s flushing.

“I make it a point not to check out teenage girls,” Tony responds, waving a hand at Bruce when he scowls, “but I think you’d probably want to chase her down, yes. To which I say: she’s way out of your league and also kind of a badass, so you might want to aim for the quiet, sassy types.”

“How much of a badass?” Miles asks.

“Quite,” Bruce assures him, and Tony laughs again. Still asleep, Amy shifts closer to him, the blanket slipping slightly from her shoulders; when Bruce glances over, he discovers that she’s pinned Joey between her chest and Tony’s side. Tony smiles softly at her as he adjusts the blanket, and Bruce looks away.

Miles lingers at the side of the bed, his attention focused not on the movie but on Tony, and Bruce reaches over to touch his arm. He flinches for a second, almost pulling away, but his shoulders soften when he realizes the hand on his arm is Bruce’s. When Bruce scoots next to Tony, Miles sits on the edge of the bed and stares at his feet. 

“Their foster mom really died?” he asks quietly.

Bruce nods. “This afternoon.”

“But she went into the hospital on Thursday, after the fire, right?” 

“Wednesday night, but yes,” Bruce replies. Miles glances over at him, eyebrows raised, and Bruce swallows around the tight feeling in the back of his throat. Even on the anniversary of important losses—Miles’s parents, Tony’s parents, Bruce’s mother—they rarely discuss _death_ ; in the dark of the bedroom, with Disney music playing in the background, it looms like a ghost in the shadows. He wets his lips. “She was burned in the fire,” he explains gently, “and inhaled a lot of smoke. The fact that she lived this long—” He shakes his head, and Miles looks back down at his hands. “The doctors did everything they could.”

Miles nods slightly. This time, when Bruce touches the side of his arm, his mouth tips into a tiny, half-shy smile. “My parents died right away,” he says softly. “Jess says they probably didn’t even know what happened.”

“That’s probably right,” Bruce agrees.

“I think it’s better like that,” Miles adds, and he leans his weight against Bruce’s side when Bruce wraps an arm around him.

A few minutes later, as Robin Hood stages a jail break and rescues all the downtrodden villagers from Sherwood Forest, Miles mumbles something about needing to find a t-shirt for school the next morning and slips out of the room. Bruce almost follows him, but decides against it; after a year together, he’s learned that Miles sometimes needs to be alone with his thoughts before he airs them to either of his parents. Music from his bedroom drifts in through the half-open door, and Bruce smiles at the familiarity of it: he and Tony listening to the normal noise of their teenage boy.

“Come here a minute,” Tony says, reaching out across the bed for Bruce, and Bruce rolls his eyes good naturedly as his husband tugs him all the way into his grip. He leans his head against Tony’s shoulder, his whole body relaxing into Tony’s familiar heat, and Tony smiles as he rests his cheek on Bruce’s hair. They finish the movie that way, Amy pillowed on Tony’s right and Bruce on his left, the girl sleeping soundly while Tony idly strokes the side of Bruce’s neck.

It’s after Robin and Marian marry that Tony asks, “You handling this all okay?” 

Bruce glances over at him. “Scale of ten?”

“Sure.”

“Seven.”

Tony twists to glance down at him, his lips pursed into a tight line. “Is ten good or bad on this scale of yours?”

Bruce snorts. “You tell me,” he replies, and Tony squeezes him a little tighter.

It’s only after the movie’s over, credits and all, that Bruce forces himself to lift his cheek from Tony’s shoulder. He rubs his face, but the exhaustion and worry both remain when he glances at his husband. “We should put her to bed,” he says, nodding toward Amy. “I need to check on Teddy, we should make sure Miles is ready for school tomorrow, and—”

“Seven, right?” Tony asks, interrupting. Bruce rolls his lips together, frowning, but Tony just shrugs. “Just need to make sure I know where we stand, real quick.”

Bruce nods. “Then, yes,” he replies, “seven.”

“In that case, being functional adults can wait just one more minute,” Tony returns, and he leans over to kiss Bruce long and sweet. 

 

== 

 

“I’m just saying,” Clint stresses, holding up his beer glass in defeat, “I don’t think I’ve _ever_ spent so much time talking about cufflinks and cumberbatches—”

“Cummerbunds,” Bruce corrects. Natasha smirks into her wine glass.

“—and tie clips before.” He helps himself to a healthy swig of his drink before nodding across the table at Bruce. “The more we talk about it, the more I wish we would’ve taken a lesson from you and Stark. Quick courthouse wedding, over in an afternoon.”

Natasha reaches for the plate of nachos. “There’s still time,” she says with a shrug.

“Except before you do,” Bruce adds, raising a hand, “please remember how much Tony’s already complained about you and Phil usurping our wedding month.” Clint grins, all teeth and raised eyebrows, and Natasha covers her mouth to hide her snorted laugh. “You’d be opening yourself up to another three months of— Let’s call it cajoling.”

“You think his ego can’t take it?” Clint asks, laughter lightening his voice.

“Or I can’t take listening to it,” Bruce replies casually, and this time, Natasha bursts out laughing.

For students at the local law school, a new semester meant navigating piles of readings, reams of research, and the ever-looming threat of midterm and final exams. For Bruce, on the other hand, it meant refreshing the same material to new students on a new night, a rude reintroduction to the schedule he _used_ to know by heart. The Tuesday crowd at Clint’s favorite dive bar consists mainly of bored-looking young professionals and a table of chatty middle-aged moms ordering complicated martinis, but it’s peaceful, and Bruce always enjoys the company.

Clint reaches to snag a nacho off Natasha’s plate, and she slaps the back of his hand. “You complained about not fitting into your pants,” she reminds him with a sly half-smirk.

He groans, smacking his head against the back of the booth. “You mention _once_ that a couple weeks off muy thai’s screwing up your waistline—”

“Once?” Bruce and Natasha ask in unison. 

Clint flips them off without losing his train of thought. “—and suddenly, they’re the snack police.” Natasha crunches loudly on a tortilla chip, smiling the whole while, and he turns his head just far enough to glare at her. “I’m gonna remember this,” he promises, gesturing with his glass. “Next time Stark brings doughnuts and then we eat at the fried chicken place and _then_ Pepper cancels hot yoga on you, I’m gonna order you salad for lunch and laugh.”

Natasha snorts. “I’d happily kill someone if it’d convince Pepper to cancel hot yoga,” she remarks, her tone so casual that Bruce can’t help but roll his lips together. Next to her, Clint literally _gulps_ his last sip of beer. He only wipes his mouth with the side of his hand after Natasha glances up from her nachos and frowns in confusion. “What?”

“Kinda sounded like you meant it,” Clint says. Bruce, for his part, nods in agreement.

Natasha, however, just shrugs. “Hot yoga’s unnatural and needs to be stopped,” she replies nonchalantly, and reaches again for the nacho.

An almost cartoonish look of raw terror flickers across Clint’s face in that moment, and as much as he tries to hold his expression neutral, Bruce ends up laughing. For a few seconds, it feels like a tightly wound spring releasing or the snap of a rubber band, and he leans back against the vinyl of their booth to enjoy it. After five days of restraining himself—controlling his grins as much as his worry, balancing on the razor-thin wire between chaos and calm—laughter feels genuinely freeing.

Not, of course, that there’s no laughter at home. No, Tony’d spent most of their Monday night cracking Amy up while Teddy and Miles voiced loud complaints about not being able to concentrate on their homework. Bruce’d rolled his eyes, but he’d smiled too, eventually ignoring his social work reports to bask in the noise and life in their home.

It’s just that laughter at home is still tinged with tension and uncertainty, and tonight, Bruce feels none of that.

He’s not certain what’s to blame, whether it’s the beer at the bar or the atmosphere at home that’s finally uncoiling the tension in his chest and belly, but he’s incredibly grateful.

Clint appears to read his mind at that very moment, because when he finally settles into a warm, comfortable grin, he discovers that the waiter’s refilled their drinks and that Clint’s watching him with raised eyebrows. “What?” he asks, reaching for his glass.

“You going hysterical on us?” 

“He did marry Tony,” Natasha points out with a tiny tip of her head. “It was bound to happen eventually.”

Clint grins, but Bruce simply rolls his eyes. “Things have been tense at home,” he admits, and both of his friends stop drinking to watch him. He shrugs. “Taking in a new child, even temporarily, isn’t easy,” he explains. “Taking in two—”

“Plus the man-child and the actual child,” Natasha says conversationally, and Clint snickers.

“—is different.” He rolls his lips together. “Harder.”

“Yeah, but you’re not keeping them for good, right?” Clint stretches out until he can rest his feet, complete with battered sneakers, on the empty stretch of bench next to Bruce; Natasha pinches him in the thigh until he swears and tucks them back under the table. “You said last month that bad as Tony wants another one, you don’t think Miles is ready for it.”

“I still don’t,” Bruce admits, shaking his head. “But placing them apart isn’t any better. Jessica’s looking for a foster home that’ll take both of them. In a few weeks or a month, maybe . . . ”

He trails off, shrugging. Across the table, Natasha raises an eyebrow. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Natasha—”

“I’m just thinking how familiar this sounds, Tony wanting you to act as a full-time placement while you list off all the reasons you can’t.” Bruce rolls his eyes, and she lifts her hands in defense. “I’m only pointing out the obvious.”

“That I’m a soft touch for my son?” 

“More like that you’re a soft touch for your son _and_ Tony,” Clint answers, and reaches for his beer.

The table of middle-aged women crow about something—last week, they spent an hour comparing themselves to various members of the _Sex in the City_ cast; tonight, it sounds like the topic of choice is _Fifty Shades of Grey_ —and hides his sigh within the sudden spike of distant laughter. Both Natasha and Clint watch him carefully as he drags his fingers through his hair—and then, as he shakes his head a second time. “Tony’s better at this than I am,” he admits. Natasha wrinkles her nose as she sets her glass down hard, her lips falling open, but she calms when he raises a hand. “We both have parenting strengths overall,” he clarifies, curling his fingers around his glass, “but when it comes to adjusting to change, to opening up— Tony’s a natural. I don’t think he even thinks twice about it. And me, I—” He rolls his lips together for a moment, the words jumbling on his tongue. “I don’t know if I can do it again. Not when Miles needs us.”

His friends fall silent, Clint staring at his beer bottle while Natasha drums her fingers against the base of her wine glass. “How is he?” she asks after a moment.

“He’s okay for now,” Bruce acknowledges with tiny shrug. “He seems to like the kids, Teddy especially, but I think it’s a distraction from whatever’s really going on. And Tony and I can’t be on top of him when we’re splitting our time and attention three different ways. I don’t want him to fall through the cracks because of this. He deserves better.”

“You’re not bad parents for having more than one kid in the house,” Natasha presses.

Bruce just smiles softly as he sips his beer.

A few more seconds of silence stretch between them, broken only by the laughing women near the bar and the half-muffled songs from the satellite radio station that’s always playing. Bruce runs his thumb along the lip of his glass and thinks of his family as he left them: Tony reviewing documents on the couch, his lap and the coffee table a sea of half-dismantled appellate briefs, Miles frowning at his math homework at the kitchen nook. Bruce’d squeezed his shoulder before he left, promising help after class and a single drink out with his friends, but then Tony’d reminded the whole household about his engineering degree and it’d turned into noisy bickering about math skills across the sciences. 

Teddy’d hidden his laughter behind the refrigerator door before emerging with a soda. “I can help, if you want,” he’d offered. 

Tony’d craned his neck to glance over the back of the couch. “You know math? Because, and don’t take this the wrong way, you don’t seem like a math kid. You seem more like a, I don’t know, shop class kid. With a side of architectural drawing. And maybe one of those gym classes based entirely on weight-lifting and—”

“Judging your book by the cover, I’d think you were in marketing, so . . . ” Teddy’d popped the tab on his soda, voice trailing off, and Bruce’d rolled his lips together to hide his grin while Miles’d snickered. Tony, on the other hand, had sputtered, his expression more surprised than offended. Teddy’d ignored him to look over at Miles. “I’ll grab my homework and work out here with you, if you want.”

Miles’d shrugged, but his pleased little smile was unmistakable. “Sure,” he’d answered.

Amy’d followed Teddy out of the guest room and planted herself across the table from Miles. By the time Bruce’d left fifteen minutes later, she’d stopped staring him down to continue on her coloring.

Bruce swallows around the lump in his throat, then chases it with a sip of beer.

“Can I ask you something?” Clint’s voice is half-hesitant, but clear, and he rocks his mostly empty glass between his hands as he shrugs. “I don’t have to ask, if you don’t want—”

“When has that ever stopped you?” Natasha wonders aloud.

“—but I just—” He shakes his head, cutting himself off, and Bruce shrugs silent permission. The other man wets his lips. “I just, I’ve gotta wonder whether you’re worried just about Miles, or just about you, or for all three of you. Because what happened with your kid—six months from foster care to adoption, no bumps in the road—that was a pretty big fluke. You and I both know that the system’s a lot messier in real life.” Bruce presses his lips together, but Clint just shrugs a second time. “And I know _you_ know that the only thing scarier than loving somebody—a kid or a guy—is when you almost lose them. I saw it happen when Tony’s baggage fucked up your life.” He raises his eyes, and Bruce’s breath stills in his chest. “And when my own baggage fucked up mine.”

There’s something solemn in Clint’s tone, and Bruce drops his eyes back down to the tabletop. Years of moisture rings are etched into the varnish, circles overlapping circles in infinite combinations, and he studies the pattern while his chest loosens. He’s only just found his voice again when Natasha asks, “It’s not just your heart on the line, is it?”

The corner of his mouth twitches as he forces himself to smile. “Honestly, I’d rather talk about Cumberbatches than about this,” he jokes, and Clint laughs as they finally change the subject.

Predictably, the house is dark when Bruce walks in, and the dogs canter around him, lapping and nipping at his hands as he loses his keys, jacket, and shoes. There’s a mug of warm tea waiting for him on the kitchen island; he breathes in the minty steam as he picks it up and wanders over to the couch. Tony’s still working, his hair sticking up at odd angles and his glasses falling halfway off his nose; Bruce nudges them up onto his face before he smoothes his hand over the top of his head.

Tony sighs and, for a moment, tips his weight into Bruce’s shoulder and side. “You distract me,” he warns, “and I’ll never finish this first outline of my first draft, and then you’ll die a tragic and unnecessary death due to insufficient sexing.” He shakes his head. “Bluest balls in the history of mankind, and all because you got too handsy on a Tuesday.”

Bruce chuckles. “Of the two of us, I’m not the one who complains about insufficient sex.”

“No, I’ve seen you in action, you just take what you’re in the mood for and act innocent later.” He rolls his eyes, hiding his grin behind the lip of his mug, and Tony beams at him like he personally hung the moon. A half-second kiss and tickle of facial hair later, Tony’s back to looming over his pile of papers, his pen clenched between his teeth as he rereads handwriting only he can decipher. Bruce leans back on the couch and rests his feet on the coffee table, toes curling around the edge as he watches Tony work. He never stills—he taps his pen or his toe, squints and grumbles, chews his lip or spins his wedding ring with his thumb—and for some reason, Bruce finds that unquestionably comforting tonight.

When his mug’s empty and his eyelids are heavy, though, he tips his head against the back of the couch and stares up at the ceiling. He studies the texture of the paint as he drifts through the last year of his life, a year of Jessica and Miles, of Tony and Vanko, of his own baggage and Tony’s matched set. He thinks of settling into their home, of their summer vacation, of their family of friends, and of everything in between.

He only realizes that he’s asked the unspoken, impossible question—“Does it ever scare you?”—when Tony stills beside him.

Bruce stills, too, his breath catching and his mouth drying out. When he turns to look at Tony—at his husband, at the man he fell hopelessly in love with due in part to the boy that’s now their son—he finds the other man staring at him, his brow furrowed and his dark eyes intense. He wets his lips. “Not about anything in particular,” he adds after a moment, “but just— The shape of your life—our lives—and the way everything’s come together.” He lifts his hands, a helpless gesture, and fiddles with his shirtsleeve. “Does it ever scare you to think about how it’s all happened? About what might come next?”

Tony removes his glasses, a half-second stall, before he shakes his head. “No. Not for a second, actually.”

“Why?”

“Because every time I start to get scared,” Tony says, falling back against the couch cushions and bumping their shoulders together, “I remember that the reason we found each other, and the reason why we built all of this, was to fight back against the scary parts.”

Bruce snorts lightly, his face almost tipping into a smile at Tony’s usual irreverence. The skin on the back of Tony’s wrist is warm when Bruce brushes his knuckles against it, and his palm against Bruce’s is warmer still. He stares at their hands for a moment before he asks, “How do you know which parts are the scary ones?”

“Because they’re all scary, right at the start,” Tony replies, and tangles their fingers together.

 

==

 

“My office in ten and I _might_ not fire both your asses,” Nick Fury barks, and Bruce almost spills water down the front of his office window.

He twists away from his row of plants, all of them thirsty thanks to the last few days of bright fall sun, but Fury’s already disappeared from view in a swish of black suit coat. Over the other sounds of their office—phones ringing, file carts rattling, Darcy and Clint bickering like siblings while Natasha laughs at both of them—he thinks he vaguely hears Tony’s voice, shouting at Pepper to hold his calls. Bruce considers a smile—of everyone, Tony gets the smallest number of calls—but then he thinks of his boss’s tight tone, and he frowns instead.

He leaves his water-filled coffee mug on the window ledge and grabs his suit coat before leaving the office.

It’s an average Wednesday afternoon for the employees of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, and Bruce falls into the rhythm he first perfected ten years ago, dodging interns, attorneys, and file clerks alike as he heads down the hallway to Fury’s office. In Thor’s office, Sif Rowan throws up her hands in frustration and paces, a caged lioness ready to lash out at a comfortable, smiling Thor; two doors down, Bucky digs his fingers into his hair as he reviews some sort of document, his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed into a tight frown. Steve holds court with two of the interns—namely, quick-witted Sharon and dour Grant Ward—Natasha and Darcy share a bag of Sour Patch Kids as Clint rolls his eyes at both of them, and Maria offers coffee to a nervous-looking Wade Wilson, who clutches his legal pad like a talisman. It’s everything as Bruce expects it to be, really, chaotic and comfortable, and he spares Phil a smile as he ducks past the man’s office.

Peggy Carter’s leaning over a few documents with Fury’s assistant Gary. The glance she offers Bruce is simultaneously worried and apologetic. “He’s in rare form,” she offers.

Bruce stops fiddling with the cuff of his suit jacket to blink at her. “I don’t understand.”

“You should just—” she replies, and gestures vaguely toward the door. Bruce swallows around the lump that rises up in the back of his throat and thanks her with a smile before he ducks into Fury’s office.

The lump nearly chokes him when he realizes that Tony’s there, too. 

He pauses just inside the doorway, almost as though caught in suspended animation. Even from across the office, it’s easy to read the surprise on Tony’s face; his eyes flick from Bruce to Fury and back to Bruce, his lips slowly pursing into a tight line. Fury’s back is to the door, his hands on his hips and his shoulders tight as he surveys the park under his window.

When Bruce steps more fully into the office, Tony raises his eyebrows in a silent question. Bruce’s only answer, a half-hearted shrug, makes him snort and toss his head like a skeptical teenager. “We’re both in with the principal today?” he asks, throwing up his hands. “Is this about the office sex? Because if you’re going to start scolding people for office sex, you really need to talk to your second-in-command before you start in on us.”

In front of the window, Fury’s shoulders tense even further. Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tony—”

“No, hang on, I think this is some sort of equal protection violation, and I’m not going to stand idly by when—”

“You really think I give a fuck who’s screwing who behind which closed door?” Fury cuts in. There’s something like shocked disbelief in the back of his voice, and for a second, Bruce thinks he might actually laugh. “Because the second I stop letting everybody in this office fraternize with everybody else is the second I start running a skeleton crew manned by Hill, Sitwell, Lewis, and Carter.” He snorts to himself, shaking his head. “Office sex. I give every last one of you more freedom than you’ve earned and you think I wanna talk about office sex.”

A flicker of confusion flashes across Tony’s expression, crinkling his brow and narrowing his eyes, and he looks almost ready to protest a second time when Fury twists away from the window. For all his contained amusement a few seconds ago, his face is now a stony mask of seriousness; his good eye darts between them as his jaw sets, loosens, and sets again. Even after decade of discussing difficult situations—both personal and professional—with the man, Bruce can’t remember a time he’s watched Fury hesitate this much before launching into either a pep talk or a dressing-down.

Bruce’s stomach sinks at the thought. Next to him, Tony slides his hands into his pockets, his own jaw tightening like he’s bracing for impact.

“Got a call today from a friend of mine at the police department,” Fury finally says, his tone so inflectionless and deadpan that the dread in Bruce’s stomach nearly bubbles over. “Seems that he helped interview a witness for a case I’ve been keeping my eye on, and he wanted to let me know how it went. And me, I appreciated that, because if this thing blows up the way I think it might, it has the potential to be a second Killgrave.”

Bruce presses his lips into a tight line. A glance in Tony’s direction reveals that his dark-eyed gaze is flicking between him and Fury, his brow still furrowed. “You know you’re talking to the appeals guy and the child welfare guy, right?’ Tony asks after a moment, flapping a hand in Bruce’s direction. “I mean, maybe I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job, but if you’re worried about a case, we’re really not the people you need to talk to.”

Fury’s mouth twists into a humorless, closed-lipped smile. “As my friend and I finished up our conversation—Detective Howlett’s the guy I talked to, by the way, works any kind of violent crime where there’s a kid involved—I said to him, ‘You know, Logan, I really hope this witness of yours is safe and sound, since his life already got turned upside down by this case I’m keeping my eye on.’” Something in his tone sharpens, and the tiny smile drops away. “And do you know what that detective told me?”

Tony glances over at the wall, his jaw tightening. Bruce, for lack of a better option, drops his eyes to the floor.

“He tells me that sure, the only two living witnesses are safe and sound, because they’re staying with two of my goddamn attorneys!” 

Bruce flinches as the booming echo of Fury’s voice carries across the office and surrounds him until he’s nearly claustrophobic. A quick glance at Tony reveals that he’s already on the defensive—shoulders and jaw tight, eyes narrowed, hands gripping his hips—but Fury ignores it and steps forward. “I am the first person to defend all of your bone-headed ideas—both your ideas, actually,” he amends, gesturing first at Tony and then, at Bruce, “but to show up at the scene of a fucking fire and leave with the only two people who walked out of that house in one piece? To feed, bathe, and clothe them while there is an active investigation?” He throws up his hands. “What the hell am I supposed to say once the investigation’s finished, huh? ‘Well, great, go interview Stark and Banner’s two new kids, maybe have a cup of coffee while you’re there!’”

Bruce snaps his head up, his hands curling into fists at his side. “They’re not our kids,” he says, his tone sharper than he intends. “They’re temporary foster placements.”

Fury snorts at him. “Yeah, ‘cause I really believe you two’d let a couple of orphans out of your sight.”

“And what if we don’t?” Tony demands. He holds out his hands in front of him, white-palmed flags of surrender, and Bruce flicks his eyes down to the carpet. “What if we keep them for a while? It was a _fire_. Fires happen, especially out here where we can go three weeks without a drop of rain and—”

“First thing tomorrow morning, the fire marshal’s ruling it suspicious circumstances,” Fury interrupts. “Crime lab’s working overtime, but they’re starting to think it might not just be any old fire.”

“Meaning arson?” Tony demands. Fury’s chin bobs, a tight nod, and Tony releases a strangled huff of disbelief as he throws up his hands. He paces away from their boss, his fingers digging into his hair as he shakes his head. “When’d arson even land on the table, huh? Because we work in this office, we’ve got at least one social worker breathing down our neck, you’d think somebody might’ve bothered to mention that—”

“Steve told me,” Bruce admits quietly. Tony twists around to gape at him, betrayal flashing across his expression. Bruce forces himself to keep breathing even as the guilt tries to choke him—and to shrug lightly. “Last Friday, when you stayed home with Amy, he came into my office. He thought we should know.”

“And you didn’t think you should maybe mention it to the guy who sleeps on the other half of your bed?” Tony snaps. Bruce glances away again, his throat too tight to speak, and Tony releases another huff of breath. “Okay, you know what? Not dealing with important marital omissions _and_ my boss yelling at me right now. We’ll come back to your heart-to-heart with Rogers later.” 

He immediately turns on Fury, and out of the corner of his eye, Bruce watches him jab two fingers in Fury’s direction. “But in the ‘yelling boss’ department: nobody mentioned arson when that house was burning down, or when we brought those kids into our house and tucked them in after their whole world imploded. And since there was no way we could’ve known? We’re not going to apologize for doing it. There’s enough shit in the world without you shitting on _us_.” He pauses just long enough to draw in a long, uneven breath. “You ordering us to send the kids away?” 

Bruce raises his eyes at that, and for a moment, he can read the thousand expressions that collide on Tony’s face: fear, determination, defiance, helplessness, and hope. His chest clenches at the way his jaw sets—and again at the way Fury snorts. 

“Would you listen even if I told you to?” he asks.

“Probably not, no.”

“Then you know the answer.”

Tony nods. “Right. So. Call the stalemate a stalemate and go, I don’t know, do whatever a guy like you does when he’s pissed off at a situation outside his control, because whatever this is? It’s not on _us_.” He twists on his heel, his jaw still tight enough to cut steel; Bruce starts to protest, to _stop_ him somehow, but the momentary flash of hurt that crosses Tony’s expression traps the words in the back of his throat. He storms out of the office, the slammed door like a gunshot behind him.

Fury sighs. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” he asks. When Bruce frowns, his brow tightening, his boss smirks and shakes his head. “Not with Stark, although lord knows why you picked him to have and to hold. With these kids—and all the mess that’s gonna rain down on you like hell if it turns out this wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill fire.”

Bruce rolls his lips together and glances over his shoulder, back to the closed doors and the hallway beyond. Fury’s the only person with glass doors into his office, and through them, Bruce can see everything: Peggy and Gary bent over a document, one of the interns wandering by, a file clerk half-running to the copy room. Tony’s nowhere to be seen, probably locked in his office already, and Bruce—

He digs his fingers through his hair. “I knew it might be arson on Friday,” he reminds Fury, but he can’t quite meet his eyes. “But I can’t split them up. After what happened, they need each other, and we can give them that.”

“Yeah, and you can give yourself a lot of grief, too.” When Bruce chuckles, Fury raises his eyebrows. “What?”

He shakes his head. “I learned a long time ago that I can handle more grief than most people,” he replies, and offers Fury a small smile before he walks out of the office. 

 

==

 

Tony barricades himself in his office with the door closed until four-thirty that afternoon, when he sends a text that reads: _picking up our actual kid and dinner, you’ve got the temporary ones_. Bruce pauses in the middle of argument in a hearing to blink at his phone for a minute, frowning.

“Doctor Banner?” Judge Smithe asks. 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, and he shakes his head to clear the cobwebs before picking up where he left off. 

He swings by the elementary school just after five to find Teddy already there, his legs dangling as he sits on the edge of a low brick retention wall and types something into his cell phone. “Tony said something about a bad day, so I thought I’d save you a step,” he says as Bruce walks up, his broad shoulders lifting in a shrug. “Plus, the library gets pretty boring after long enough.”

“You could go out with friends if you wanted,” Bruce points out.

Teddy hops off the wall and falls into step next to him. “Maybe once Amy’s a little less—Amy,” he says, and the discussion ends at that. 

Amy’s grinning when they walk into the gym to collect her from her after school program, and by the time they’re back out at the car, she’s filled in all the details about her day: math lessons on the computer, quality time with her “teacher for the special kids who need extra help” Mrs. Hill, parachute day in gym class, and a visit from the Daisy Girl Scouts to the after school program. 

“They learned to make bracelets out of string and beads,” she reports, rolling her head back against the headrest. She sighs dreamily, and next to Bruce, Teddy chuckles. “Can I learn how to make bracelets?”

“I think our niece knows how to make bracelets,” Bruce says, glancing at her through the rear view mirror. She perks up, hope blooming on her face. “Maybe this weekend, she can come over and you can make some.”

“With my name?” she asks immediately. “Because they had their names on their bracelets.”

“If she has alphabet beads, sure,” Bruce replies, and Amy beams the whole rest of the way home.

Tony’s already home when they walk in the door, a feast of Mexican food spread across the kitchen island like some sort of low-budget buffet, and all three kids descend on their dinner like starving convicts just released from prison. Bruce hangs back, hands in his pockets and lips pursed; after long enough, Tony stops dishing out Spanish rice to join him, their shoulders bumping lightly. 

“You want to yell?” Bruce asks quietly, the words hardly audible over Amy’s demands for both a taco _and_ an enchilada. 

Tony shrugs. “Maybe later,” he admits, but he only steps away after the kids are all crowded into the kitchen nook with their plates—and even then, he drags Bruce with him.

Bruce tries to track the rest of the evening, to itemize events like he’s keeping a ledger, but they jumble together into hazy, disorganized pieces: Amy’s bath and spelling words; Miles’s math homework; Tony’s lips against the back of his neck as he rinses plates in the sink; the dogs dashing around the yard while he and Miles squint at constellations. Once Amy’s in bed, Teddy disappears into the guest room to call Billy—“You know we need to meet him eventually, right?” Tony asks, leaving Teddy to roll his eyes—while Miles spends his last free half-hour of the night reading _Walking Dead_ comics in the living room, and everything feels—

Well. Bruce barely believes in normal, but it feels calm, almost peaceful.

When he tucks Miles into bed that night, Miles asks, “How bad are you and Dad going to fight?” Bruce almost knocks Miles’s lamp off the bedside table as he twists to stare back at his son, but the boy just sighs and rolls his eyes. “He drove like a crazy person and made it all night without, like, molesting you in front of us.”

“Let’s not use the word ‘molest,’” Bruce suggests. Miles pulls a face, and he shakes his head slowly. “And don’t worry about me and Tony, okay? We’re fine.”

Miles snorts at him and flops back against his pillow, his eyes focused up at the ceiling. He stays quiet while Bruce switches off the lamp, and again as he maneuvers across the dark bedroom. It’s only when the door’s halfway closed—Jarvis darting through in the last second and leaping onto the end of the bed—that he finally says, “It sucks when you guys are mad at each other.”

Bruce rolls his lips together. “I know,” he admits, “and I’m working on that.”

Even in the half-dark, he can see Miles nod. “Okay,” he replies, and burrows down into his comforter.

Bruce stands in the doorway for a long time before he finally closes the door and walks away.

Tony’s already stripped down to his underwear when he walks into the master bedroom, his back to the door, and Bruce studies the line of his back and the shape of his ass before he quietly shuts the door behind him. In the soft white light from their bedside lamp, Tony’s skin glows like pale porcelain, and his dark eyes glint when he finally turns around. His scar stands out, aged and faded but somehow still angry, and Bruce only realizes that he’s closed the distance between them when his fingers trail along it.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he says, his voice rough and foreign to his own ears. “I should have— I don’t know why I didn’t, I just—”

“Yeah, I know,” Tony replies, and his hands slip under Bruce’s shirt as he shuts him up with a kiss.

They stumble into bed together, clumsily coordinated in shoving away Bruce’s shirt and slacks, in dragging fingers through hair and curling fingernails against shoulder blades. Bruce pours his apologies into every kiss and touch, into his teeth against Tony’s pulse point and his palm against the inside of Tony’s thigh, into the press of fingers that arches Tony off the bed. The house around them is quiet and still, but they refuse to be, Tony groaning into Bruce’s neck as Bruce holds a hand above his head, their fingers tangling as they fall together, their rhythm like a third pulse between them.

Bruce can’t explain why he never mentioned the possibility of arson, why he’s not rushing Jessica into finding new placements, why he’s frightened of caring about these children—and worse, frightened of letting them go. He can’t explain the tightness in his chest when he saw Amy and Miles stretched out with his husband on their bed, or why Teddy’s easy smile drives the breath from his lungs. Instead, he gasps Tony’s name like a prayer, his lips against the shell of his ear as Tony falls apart under him and as he comes undone, piece by piece, to the sound of Tony’s keens and the sweat-slick perfection of Tony’s skin.

Afterward, they curl together, their breathing still uneven as Bruce presses his nose into the nape of Tony’s neck. “I didn’t think they’d stay past the weekend,” he admits quietly, his voice a whisper in the dark. “And if they weren’t staying, I didn’t see the point of—”

He trails off with a shake of his head, and his fingers spread across Tony’s hip. They lay together like that for a long time, silently tangled as the house settles around them, before Tony finally sighs. “Jessica’ll find them somewhere else they can be together,” he points out, his shoulders shifting in a shrug. “Sooner or later, arson or no arson, they’ll end up with somebody else. Just because we’re not splitting them up doesn’t mean we’re keeping them, right?”

Bruce rolls his lips together. In the silence, it’s easy to think about Amy’s bright-as-day smile and Teddy’s casual kindness, about Miles’s concern about Teddy and Amy’s well-being and Tony’s delight at holding court for all three children, about Jessica’s quiet fear the night of the fire and Fury’s loud, half-parental concern in his office. Worse, it’s even easier to think about a crowded group home cluttered with strangers, the quiet terror on the face of a twelve-year-old boy in the Union County courthouse, and the steady emptiness of his life before he met Tony Stark.

Tony grabs his hand and tucks it around him, flattening Bruce’s palm to his chest. Bruce can feel his scar and his heartbeat both at once. 

“Right,” he lies, and presses closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I likely should have mentioned this earlier, but: there is a potential conflict present for the D.A.'s office in Teddy and Amy--the two witnesses to the fire--living with attorneys from the office. If the fire is arson and someone is prosecuted, there is a potential for ugliness because, as Fury says, the witnesses for the State are living with attorneys for the State. It is not a guaranteed problem, but it has potential. (Similar to how none of the people who knew Derek Bishop would prosecute Kate in Diversions. Fury is a man of abundant caution.)


	6. The Kids are Alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce is reminded that parenting isn’t always about the big things, but the little ones: like offering comfort, arranging playdates, and buying cake. And if a decision follows right along behind that reminder— Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I know about night terrors, I learned from the internet. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta-readers, Jen and saranoh. I did a bit more post-beta editing than usual this week, so any mistakes are emphatically my own, because they are rock stars but I am a mess.

The screaming starts just after nine-thirty.

Bruce is already in bed when it happens, attempting to power through the last thirty-odd pages of _Tiger Mom_ for next week’s book club discussion while Miles and Tony ostensibly search for a save point in their favorite zombie-killing video game. For the most part, the house is calm and quiet, Amy safely tucked into bed as Miles shouts about sniper rifles and Tony snaps about impatience. According to Jessica’s latest text, she’s about fifteen minutes from bringing Teddy back from group therapy, but then, Bruce always struggles to understand Jessica’s personal form of shorthand.

At nine-thirty, he scratches his nose under his glasses and turns a page in his book.

Two minutes later, the sound of a hysterical scream freezes his blood in his veins.

For a moment, he’s suspended in that first half-second of uncontrolled screaming. He registers it like an out-of-body experience—its high pitch and note of helpless panic, its proximity and the tremble running through it—and nearly forgets that he can move at all. By the time he ditches his book and half-climbs, half-falls out of bed, there’s feet thundering up the stairs; somehow, despite his socks slipping on the hardwood floor and his still-muddy brain, he beats Tony to the closed door across from the master bedroom by scant inches.

The screaming’s louder with the door open, and the shock of dark—lit only by a nightlight that casts butterfly shapes on the ceiling—disorients Bruce for a split second. The sofa-sleeper mattress squeaks, a shadowed shape thrashes around under the bed sheets, and someone manages to find the light switch.

The butterflies disappear, and in her sleep, Amy kicks at nothing and releases another blood-curdling scream.

She tosses and writhes on the bed, her arms fighting against the air even as Bruce’s knees hit the mattress. When he presses a hand to her curls, she immediately twists away from him, and her fist slams into his arm. Behind him, half-muffled by Amy’s cries, Tony instructs Miles to find one of their cell phones, and Miles’s footsteps pound down the hallway; on the bed, Amy rocks away from Bruce, her cries morphing into words as she battles against whatever’s in her head. He recognizes Teddy’s name without a second thought, but then, it’s _mama_ and Sylvia, Ed and Tristan. The realization that she’s calling for people who can’t comfort her drops Bruce’s heart into the pit of his stomach, and his voice shakes when he strokes her hair and says her name.

Amy kicks the sheets away and knocks Joey out of the bed.

When her eyes open, she gasps like she’s breaking the surface of the water after a dive. She stares at him, her brown eyes huge and terrifid—and then immediately bursts into tears.

Within seconds, Tony’s at Bruce’s side and reaching for the girl, but she ignores him entirely and stretches her arms out toward Bruce. Suddenly, she’s not the seven-year-old who chided Miles about his scary zombie video game but a terrified toddler, her fingers flexing in the air as she waits for someone to pick her up, and Bruce hardly realizes that he’s bundled her into his arms until she’s cradled against his chest. He rocks her like a baby, his own breath trembling as he tries to shush her sobs, but she quakes like a leaf and hides her face against his shirt. She chokes on every big gulp of air.

Tony reaches down and collects Joey, but Amy never lifts her head away from Bruce’s t-shirt. When their eyes meet, Bruce recognizes the fear on his husband’s face, but it’s tinged with panicked relief. 

Bruce rolls his lips together, and Tony reaches around to rub _his_ back. Amy shudders her way through another racking sob, leaving Bruce to press his cheek against her hair and murmur that she’s all right. 

They’re still sitting there a few minutes later when Miles appears in the doorway, Tony’s cell phone clutched in his hands. He surveys the scene nervously, his weight shifting from one foot to another, before he gestures weakly with the phone. “Jessica said they’re like ten minutes away,” he explains before he swallowing audibly. “She said that Amy has these things called night terrors? Like, really bad nightmares?”

Tony snorts. “That’s like saying that slitting your wrists is just a really bad paper cut,” he mutters. Bruce considers rolling his eyes, but the thin strand of worry that strings Tony’s words together stops him. He watches as the other man touches Amy’s knee, and then as Amy flinches away and presses herself closer to Bruce. Tony shakes his head. “They’re intense nightmares that kids don’t remember,” he says, glancing over at Miles. “Dot’s had them a couple times, usually right before she breaks out in an ear infection or something. I’m pretty sure your Uncle Steve has post-traumatic night terror disorder from the first time it happened with that one.”

Miles worries his lips together again, his eyes trained on the girl who’s still bundled up in Bruce’s grip. “But, I mean, she’s okay, right?”

Bruce glances down at Amy. She’s calmer now, hiccupping a little as her breathing starts to calm, and he wonders whether she’s even aware of where she’s woken up. Tears rim her eyes, her lashes clumped by them, and she wipes her wet face on the side of her arm as she slowly starts to uncurl. “You alright?” Bruce asks gently, offering her a little smile.

She nods and presses her cheek back against his chest, and in the doorway, Miles’s shoulders start to unclench. “Okay,” he says. He sounds completely unconvinced. 

Tony slowly starts to unwind, too, his posture softening until his arm brushes against Bruce’s. Bruce tries to offer him a smile, but his heart’s still lodged firmly in the back of his throat. For a few minutes, they allow the house to grow silent and heavy around them, Amy slowly settling while Miles lingers in the doorway.

Eventually, though, Tony knocks the back of his hand against Bruce’s thigh and stands. “Well, since I get the distinct impression that I am intruding on some quality Bruce-and-Amy cuddles while there are zombies to decapitate, I think I’m needed elsewhere,” he says, and bends over to plant a kiss in Bruce’s messy hair. “And keep our nervous kid busy,” he adds, his voice dropping far enough that Bruce can hardly hear him.

Still at the doorway, Miles shrugs and shifts his weight. “If you need to take care of Amy, I can just go finish the level and—”

“Nab the rest of the achievements, ruining my score for eternity? Yeah, I don’t think so.” Miles cracks a shy smile at that, and Tony’s face splits in a grin. “Besides, your dad’s got his hands _literally_ full right now. Bet we could sneak in an extra level without him even noticing.”

Bruce rolls his eyes, but he can’t help smiling. “You know I can hear you plotting your rebellion, right?”

“And you’ll be the first against the wall when the zombie apocalypse comes, but I promise a very moving eulogy before I loot your corpse.” Bruce snorts at that, and at the way Tony leans in to nuzzle his face in Bruce’s messy hair before he shoos Miles out of the room. But Bruce’s chest loosens as the two of them start bickering about the proper strategy for the rest of the level and the nearest health packs, and by the time the video game music starts drifting up the stairs, he can breathe again.

Amy sits up slightly, brushing wild curls from her face. “I think I had a bad dream,” she says. 

Bruce chuckles and strokes his hand along her back. “You did, but you’re okay now,” he tells her, and she nods uncertainly as she settles back against him.

They cuddle together in the silence that follows, Bruce shifting them around so he can sit up against the back of the couch with Amy tucked against him, a ball of blankets, pink pajamas, and Joey. She pillows her head on his chest, drifting in and out of sleep as Bruce rubs her back gently; at one point, he switches to pet her hair, and she smiles as she closes her eyes. She smells vaguely of bubble gum bubble bath and detangling shampoo, and the more her breathing slows, the more she reminds Bruce of a smaller child: frightened, shy, clinging desperately to comfort by hiding from her fear.

She’d huddled in her blankets as Bruce and Tony’d tucked her in that night, locking the windows and switching on the nightlight that Tony’d bought for Dot’s sleepovers years ago. She’d spent most of her evening building Lego houses on the living room floor, boldly explaining the design features to anyone who’d listen—including Miles. 

“He’s a nice boy,” she’d said sleepily as Tony’d adjusted her pillow—and then, tweaked a couple of her curls. She’d giggled and wriggled away from him. “He liked my Lego house.”

“Given that it was an architectural marvel, that’s just good taste on his part,” Tony’d replied, and she’d grinned as he’d stroked her hair and wished her a good night.

Bruce strokes her hair now instead of Tony, his own eyes drifting shut. His heart feels like it’s swelling, two sizes too large for his chest and still growing, and he rocks Amy idly as he leans his head against the wall behind the couch.

“She okay?” a voice asks a few minutes later, and Bruce jerks awake to find Teddy standing in the doorway. He’s still wearing his jacket, and his hair—mussed either by the wind or by his fingers—stands up at odd angles. The longer he stands there, surveying the scene, the more his shoulders relax back into a comfortable teenage slouch.

“I think she is now,” Bruce replies with a nod. Amy stirs slightly, pressing closer to his chest, and he tips his head down to look at her. Her long eyelashes flutter, but she stays asleep. “How was therapy?”

Teddy snorts. “Until Jessica broke about eighty different traffic laws bringing me back to stay with my attorney foster dads? Great.”

Bruce smiles as he shakes his head. “Our office can only prosecute if it happened in this county.”

“It happened in _both_ counties. My life flashed before my eyes.” When Bruce finally chuckles, Teddy flashes him a broad, easy grin. He shucks his jacket as he steps into the office, balling it up almost nervously and holding it in his lap as he settles on the edge of the bed. “She hasn’t had a nightmare in a really long time,” he says quietly.

Bruce watches him worry his bottom lip. “But she’s had them since you’ve known her?”

“Yeah.” Teddy reaches out to touch the girl’s ankle, but she only grumbles and tucks herself closer to Bruce. Bruce presses his lips together to hide his smile. “The first time it happened, I thought she’d scream the house down,” Teddy continues, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “She shrieked and cried, and the only person who managed to calm her down was Ed. But a couple months after I moved in, they stopped, so I figured she might be, you know, over them.” He huffs out a breath before glancing back at Bruce. “Do kids even get over these kinds of nightmares?”

“Eventually,” Bruce replies.

Teddy nods unevenly, his eyes dropping back to Amy. For a few minutes, Bruce swears the only sound in the room is her soft, steady breaths. “Ed and Sylvia went out one night and sort of left me to babysit,” Teddy eventually volunteers. “Their friends bought them tickets to some comedy thing, and they swore they’d be home by ten-thirty, tops. And about fifteen minutes before they got home, she started with the screaming.” He sighs and holds his balled-up jacket a little tighter. “It was almost like she wouldn’t wake up—which I guess is part of it, and Sylvia said later that it’s worse to wake her up when she’s in the middle of it—but anyway, I’m trying to calm her down and Tristan’s freaking out because I can’t, and it’s all such a mess that I didn’t even hear their car pull up. And—”

He trips on the end of the sentence, his voice catching, and shakes his head. Bruce offers him a small, encouraging smile, but Teddy never raises his eyes; the whole of his focus is on Amy, curled up and comfortable in Bruce’s arms. He finally shrugs. “It took Ed to bring her out of it,” he says quietly. “Me, I tried for fifteen minutes, but something about Ed wrapping her up and soothing her . . . ”

He trails off, shaking his head again, and Bruce reaches out to gently touch his arm. Teddy flinches like he’s tempted to pull away, but he settles when their eyes meet. “It’s not your fault that you couldn’t calm her down,” Bruce tells him.

Teddy snorts what sounds like a laugh and drops his eyes back down to his jacket. “I know I do okay with her,” he replies after a moment, “but sometimes— I don’t know, sometimes I think what Amy really needs is a dad.”

The clench in Bruce’s gut almost knocks the wind out of him. He glances down at Amy—sweet, sleeping Amy with her blankets and stuffed kangaroo—and pretends for a moment that the thick feeling in his throat’s only his imagination. He fails, but he _tries_. 

“Everyone needs a dad,” he responds after a few more seconds. His own voice sounds tight and distant.

“Probably,” Teddy murmurs back.

They sit there until Miles and Tony trudge up the stairs, at which point Teddy strokes a hand down Amy’s arm and wishes both her and Bruce a good night. There’s an aborted half-conversation in the hall about math homework and zombies, but Bruce is too distracted by other things to listen. Instead, he studies the shadows that stretch across the floor—Miles’s gawky frame, Tony’s familiar shape, Teddy’s broad shoulders—and smoothes Amy’s rumpled pajama shirt.

It’s another ten minutes before he finally untangles Amy’s fingers from the front of his shirt and settles her onto the mattress. Amy immediately stirs, twisting the blankets around her until she’s almost literally cocooned in them. Bruce chuckles as he adjusts her pillow and brushes hair out of her face, and somehow, that’s what wakes her.

She blinks at him, her big eyes sleep-cloudy, and yawns. “Is it morning?” she asks.

He smiles. “No, it’s late. Go back to sleep.”

She nods groggily and burrows back into her blankets. It’s only when Bruce is at the door, his fingertips reaching for the light switch, that she asks, “Can we go back to Sylvie’s soon?”

The question’s completely innocent, the sleepy confusion of a seven-year-old who recently saw her life turned upside down, but Bruce’s stomach twists anyway. For a split-second, he remembers his first terrifying nights in the orphanage, crying for his mother and not understanding why the strange adults surrounding him refused to bring him home. Weeks of quiet conversations later—with social workers, with therapists, with his aunt—and he’d started to understand death.

But some nights, he’d still cried for his mother.

Amy’s eyes are closed when he looks back at her, but he forces a small smile, anyway. “No, sweetheart,” he says quietly, and shuts off the light.

If that night he spoons against Tony’s back and presses his face into the nape of Tony’s neck harder than usual, he keeps that to himself.

And if that night he spends more time awake than asleep, flooded with memories from his own, broken childhood— Well, he keeps that to himself, too.

 

==

 

In the morning, as Miles climbs out of the Prius to head into school, he freezes. “Forget something?” Bruce asks, frowning.

The boy shakes his head, and for a second, he appears lost in thought: his lips purse, his brow furrows, his eyes dart between Bruce and the crowd of kids outside the school. Finally though, almost reluctantly, he reaches down into the foot well and grabs his backpack.

“For the record,” he says, not really meeting Bruce’s eyes, “you’re both really good dads.”

Even around the tight, breathless feeling in his chest, Bruce smiles. “Thanks,” he says, and when Miles finally glances at him, he’s smiling too.

 

==

 

“Okay, no, wait,” Clint cuts in, a pickle dropping onto the table as he raises both hands and his sandwich into the air. “You _have_ to back up and explain how your kindergartener made the realtor cry.”

Steve’s cringe travels to his shoulders, a full-body flinch that only ends when Bucky snickers into the last of his meatball sub. An immediate Rogers-Barnes glare-off follows, Steve’s expression thoroughly unimpressed while Bucky, unsurprisingly, rolls his eyes.

Clint leans over and crowds into Bruce’s personal space. “Ten bucks says they argue now and make out later,” he mock-whispers.

On Bruce’s other side, Natasha curls her upper lip into a sneer. “I can smell your banana pepper breath from here,” she complains, and like a child on the playground, Clint exhales _hard_ in her direction.

It’s a mostly quiet Friday around the office, the perfect day to sit out on a picnic table in the shade of the building and enjoy lunch with friends. Or, rather, to _attempt_ to enjoy lunch, because Natasha reaches around behind Bruce to smack Clint upside the head, Clint attempts to kick her under the table, and Bruce—

“Please don’t make me threaten to turn the car around,” he says, lifting his leg so Clint can’t kick him, too.

Steve stops silently bickering with his better half and smirks across the table. “They’re reminding you of your teenager?” he teases.

“Worse,” Bruce returns, “they’re reminding me of Tony.”

Natasha nearly snorts her soda, and Clint’s face is so dramatically _offended_ that Bruce nearly follows her lead. An unseasonably warm wind rolls across the grassy patch between the building and the street, bringing with a series of unmistakable fall scents: burnt leaves, fresh soil, lingering damp from the rain a few days ago.

Bruce smiles to himself and returns to his sandwich.

Next to him, Clint huffs and dumps the last of his baked chips onto his sandwich paper. “I’m gonna get my revenge for that,” he warns, and Bruce rolls his eyes good naturedly as he shrugs his response. “And as for _you_ ,” he adds, pointing a chip at Steve, “I still wanna know how your kid upset your realtor that bad. Because I know she’s a spitfire and everything, but that’s a lot even for her.”

“She’s a clever girl,” Natasha intones. “She’ll go far.”

“Okay, you can’t encourage her too,” Bucky retorts, and Natasha smiles serenely into her salad.

Across the table, Steve sighs and drags fingers through his hair. “In our defense,” he says, “our realtor’s big on the ‘whole family experience.’ She talks about it a lot, and she really wants to win Dot over.”

“Meaning she wants to play our kid against us,” Bucky corrects. Steve rolls his eyes, and Bucky responds with a truly sour expression. “Steve, I’m sorry, but like I keep saying: anybody who turns to the five-year-old after a viewing and asks her opinion about the house is trying _way_ too hard.”

“It’s cute,” Steve defends.

“No, it’s emotional manipulation,” Bucky returns. “Help me out here, guys.”

Natasha shrugs. “In your particular case, and because Dot really _is_ the family decision-maker, it’s not a horrible plan.” 

“She has a point,” Bruce acknowledges.

Clint, for his part, snorts into the last few bites of his sub.

Steve frowns at all of them, his brow furrowing, and promptly ignores Bucky’s little grin of triumph. “She’s five. Even if she influences our decision—which she’s bound to do, she’s our daughter—it’s not a democracy.”

Clint rolls his eyes as he reaches for his soda. “Rogers, everything you touch turns into a democracy.” Steve’s face pinches, deepening his frown, and Clint points his soda at him. “Here’s an example: how’d we pick where we grabbed lunch today?”

“Proximity?” Steve suggests.

“Voting. Same as we picked this picnic table, same as we picked the place we went for Bucky’s birthday, same as we pick _everything_ when you’re part of the group.”

Bruce rolls his lips together to hide his smile. “He’s not wrong,” he offers. Next to him, Natasha nods sagely as she spears a slice of cucumber.

In terms of sheer pouty-lipped _hurt_ , Steve’s expression of betrayal almost defeats Tony’s. “Do you want the story, or do you want to make a bunch of patriotism jokes?” he finally asks.

“Are they mutually exclusive?” Bucky asks with a grin. Steve steals their shared bag of chips and, when Bucky reaches for them, elbows him lightly in the side.

Business as usual for those two, then.

The story of Dot and the realtor is a complicated one involving espionage, treehouses, and secret passages. “We let her start watching some cartoon about spy kids in a treehouse,” Bucky explains, “and the only person who regrets it more than us is the woman trying to find us a house.” Steve and Bucky tag-team the most important parts of the story, interjecting details between bites of sandwich and slurps of soda, and a few times, Natasha and Clint laugh hard enough that Bruce is afraid he might need to administer the Heimlich. Bruce laughs too, chuckles that burble up from deep in his chest without his permission, but he also catches himself glancing at his watch every few minutes, monitoring just how much of their lunch hour’s ticked away so far.

Tony’d disappeared into a closed-door meeting with Phil about a half-hour before lunch. He’d stopped by Bruce’s office beforehand, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and hair rumpled, and perched on the edge of Bruce’s desk. “The good news is that, if I’m a good little appellate attorney who listens very attentively to Professor Coulson’s endless stream of unsolicited advice, he’ll probably spring for lunch and I won’t need to eat half of your sandwich,” he’d reported, toying with one of Bruce’s pens instead of meeting his eyes. “The bad news is that, if I’m a bad little appellate attorney, I will need to steal cash out of your wallet to eat out of the vending machine.”

“We have a cafeteria downstairs,” Bruce’d reminded him.

Tony’d snorted, a tiny grin curling the corners of his mouth. “I’m pretty sure our kid’s middle school would reject half that stuff as ‘not fit for human consumption,’ and since I’ve heard Miles’s reviews of those lunches, that’s not high praise.” Bruce’d rolled his eyes and shaken his head, but Tony’d ignored both things to lean down and plant a kiss on his temple. “If I’m done before one, I’ll come regale you and the lunch bunch with tales from the Coulson crypt.”

“Clint will love you for that.”

“Clint needs to be aware of what he’s getting into, because the only thing on the planet with the potential to be worse than their getting-together angst is their acrimonious-divorce angst.” 

He’d tucked Bruce’s pen into Bruce’s chest pocket, his fingertips lingering until Bruce felt their heat through his shirt and undershirt, and then disappeared out Bruce’s office door.

It’s ten minutes before one, and Bruce hasn’t heard anything from Tony: no text message, no e-mail, no sudden and showy appearance at the end of their table. 

He rolls his lips together and shakes his watch back under his shirt sleeve.

“And it would’ve been fine,” Steve continues, shaking his head in defeat, “if she hadn’t tried to convince Dot—”

“Who is _way_ too smart for her own good,” Bucky reminds them all.

“—that the basement counted as a secret spy hideout.”

Even missing chunks of the story, Bruce cringes in secondhand embarrassment. “Was she at least diplomatic about it?” he asks while Natasha smirks and Clint stares in almost impressed disbelief.

Bucky grins, his first few laugh lines crinkling. “Not at _all_ ,” he replies, gesturing broadly with his soda. “Better yet, her entire basis for why basements _aren’t_ secret hideouts centered around the fact that, quote, ‘My uncle Bruce had a basement at his old house and the only thing in it was not-secret clothes machines and spiders.’”

Clint and Natasha each burst into loud cackles, their voices echoing off the face of the judicial complex and out into the fall afternoon. Bruce, for his part, rubs his forehead. “I am so sorry,” he says, but he’s not really able to hide his own little smile. 

Bucky snorts at him. “Don’t be sorry. It was great.”

Steve shoots his husband a tight, warning look. “It was not great, Buck.”

“Says the guy who laughed the whole way home.”

The tips of Steve’s ears immediately flood with red, and he tilts his head down to scratch the back of his neck. “I laughed in shame,” he attempts, but the only thing worse than his poker face is the hitch in his voice when he lies.

Clint hears it, too, because he laughs even louder. “We’re supposed to believe that shame laughing’s a thing?” 

Steve scowls at him. “Shut up,” he mutters, but the words lift like he wants to laugh, too. 

Clint collects their balled-up sandwich papers a few minutes later, throwing each of them into the garbage can by the doors with terrifying, almost preternatural precision. The last shot involves jumping high enough to whip it over Natasha’s head, and still, it banks off the wall and drops into the can. “Greatest garbage marksman in the world,” Clint brags, and Natasha elbows him as they head into the building.

Bucky needs to stop by the clerk’s office, so he kisses Steve goodbye in front of the elevators and disappears down the hall. Clint and Natasha tease Bruce about his age before they head to the back stairwell. “Appreciate your knees while you have them,” Bruce calls after them, and they laugh as they wave over their shoulders. When Bruce leans forward to punch the up button, though, he discovers that Steve’s beaten him to it—and is lingering next to him. 

“You’re not walking up the long way?” Bruce asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m worried about my knees, too,” Steve jokes in response, and Bruce chuckles as he watches the other man slide his hands into his pockets. “But actually, I wanted to ask if you guys wanted to try out a play date with Dot and Amy this weekend. If you think Amy’s ready for that.”

Bruce rolls his lips into a tight line and lets his eyes drift up to the illuminated floor indicators over the elevator doors. He’d spent the better part of his morning trying to forget about Amy’s night terror, a task made a hundred times harder when Jessica’d called him with questions. “I want to make a full report to her therapist,” she’d explained, her voice marred by traffic sounds as she undoubtedly drove from one foster care placement to another. “I can’t do that unless I have all the details.”

“She hardly recognized that it happened,” Bruce’d replied, scratching his fingers through his hair. He’d started and then abandoned three different projects that morning, and he’d stared out at the piles of open folders on his desk—and then, at the dozens of different documents open on his computer screen. “And even though she was a little groggy this morning, I don’t think she even remembers waking up, let alone—”

“Bruce.” The tight, almost chiding note in Jessica’s tone’d led him to snap his mouth shut. He’d stared down at the slightly dog-eared photo pinned to the bulletin board next to his desk, his favorite from Miles’s adoption. Jessica’d sighed in his ear. “You’re worried about her?”

“I’m worried that they’re not adjusting, yes.”

“Oh, good, we’re dodging my questions after they’ve only been with you a week. A new record.” He’d snorted at that, but when she’d started speaking again, her voice’d lightened significantly. “I’m worried about her, too,” she’d admitted, “and I want her to be able to deal with this. Death’s hard for kids. Teddy’s been through it before, but Amy— I know she talks about her grandmother dying, but this is really her first brush with the concept. If she’s having nightmares, I need to get her therapist on her so we can nip in the bud.”

Bruce’d nodded and forced his eyes away from the photo. “Teddy said she’d stopped having them,” he’d reported.

“And now they’re back, and we need to start from square one.”

The elevator chimes, pulling Bruce out of his thoughts. When he glances over at Steve, Steve raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Long day?” he asks.

Bruce snorts. “Something like that,” he replies, the cobwebs hardly clearing as he shakes his head. He thumbs the button for the sixth floor, all the while aware that Steve’s watching him carefully. He runs his fingers through his hair before admitting, “Amy had a rough night last night.”

Steve purses his lips for a moment. “Rough how?”

“She used to struggle with night terrors, and although I guess it’s been a while, she had another one last night.” Sympathy flashes across Steve’s face, his lips parting like he’s about to offer a thousand helpful suggestions, and Bruce raises a hand. “Jessica’s talking to her therapist,” he assures him, “and we managed to settle her before it turned too ugly. It just—”

The words escape him for a moment, and he sighs instead of finishing the sentence. Steve offers him a small smile. “Sometimes, I forget how young Dot still is,” he says, shaking his head. “She talks in complete sentences, picks out her own clothes, pours her own juice when the bottle’s not too full— And then, we’re hit with something she can’t _quite_ wrap her head around, and it’s like she’s two all over again.”

Bruce snorts a little at that, and their shoulders brush as they step out of the elevator together. The secure door into the district attorney’s office waits for them, but for some reason, he lingers in the hallway. The second Steve notices, he stops too, and they stare at each other for a few seconds.

Finally, Bruce asks, “How do you deal with her being so young and so grown-up at the same time?”

Steve chuckles and shrugs his broad shoulders. “Usually, we cuddle and talk about it until she’s back to being the too-smart kid we somehow lucked into,” he replies, and Bruce smiles.

By the time Bruce returns to his office, they’ve tentatively scheduled a Saturday afternoon playdate that will last the exact length of one open house. “And longer if they’re enjoying themselves, but _please_ don’t feel obligated,” Steve stresses in the hall, and Bruce squeezes his arm before they go their separate ways. There are no new e-mails in his inbox, no hastily scribbled notes in Tony’s chicken scratch handwriting, and when he checks his office voicemail, he finds three messages from three different guardians ad litem but none from Tony Stark.

He locks his computer before he heads back down the hallway toward Tony’s office. The door’s closed, complete with a messily scrawled _do not disturb_ sign in red permanent marker, and Bruce frowns at it for a moment before reaching for the doorknob. “Good luck with _that_ ,” Pepper warns from where she’s binding a stack of appellate briefs at her desk.

Bruce rolls his lips together. “How bad is it?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know what he and Phil talked about, but he’s snapped at just about everyone he’s encountered since their meeting broke up.” She glances over her shoulder at him. “I know some great divorce attorneys if you’re interested.”

He snorts half a laugh. “Thanks,” he replies, and cracks open the door.

Tony’s working on the longer half of his L-shaped desk, his head tilted down toward a thick packet of papers. His left hand’s buried in his hair, his right hand taps a highlighter against the edge of his desk, and for a second, Bruce is struck by how _miserable_ he looks. Every inch of his body is tightly coiled, and his leg jumps in irritation as he uncaps the highlighter with his teeth and drags it across the surface of the paper, muttering to himself.

Bruce swallows and considers leaving him alone.

Instead, he lightly knocks on the doorframe and watches as Tony nearly jerks out of his chair in surprise.

“Dammit, Pep, I told you—” he starts, but all the fight drains out of him the second he recognizes that it’s Bruce standing in the doorway. He sighs, his shoulders softening, and offers up an embarrassed smile. “To be fair,” he greets, “you and Pepper have the whole ‘Tony Stark tried for years to see you naked’ thing in common.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “That’s not as reassuring as you probably think it is,” he points out.

“No, but it’s charming. I mean, I assume it’s charming. And more than that, I assume that if it’s _not_ charming, I’ll hear about it later.” Bruce snorts around his smile, shaking his head as Tony pushes away from the desk and crosses his office in a few short strides. His hands find Bruce’s hips and settle there, his fingers splaying almost possessively. “How was the lunch bunch? Full of references to how I’m the best husband in the world, I hope.”

“Of course,” Bruce replies dryly, and Tony’s face sparks in a warm, half-relieved grin. He studies that grin for a moment, and the lines around Tony’s eyes, before he adds, “I told Steve we’d take Dot for a little while on Saturday. A play date, maybe.”

If anything, Tony’s grin grows. “Dot Barnes may be exactly what Amy needs in her life, you know.”

“Or the exact opposite of what she needs.”

“Hey, it’s about a fifty-fifty split, and I like those odds.” 

Bruce rolls his eyes again, nearly chuckling until he realizes how quickly Tony’s grin dims—and more than that, how his thumbs trace idle, nervous patterns along Bruce’s waist. He presses his lips together. “How was your meeting with Phil?”

Tony shrugs. “Oh, you know, full of his usual irritating wisdom and comments about how I, despite my best efforts, don’t own the month of December.”

“Did you eat?”

“Depends. Do too-hard twizzlers and despair count as a meal?”

Bruce frowns and feels his brow furrow. “No.”

“Then, no, I didn’t eat.”

He sighs. “Tony—”

“Hey, big guy, it’s okay,” Tony assures him. He draws his hands away to raise them, his palms like white flags of surrender, and Bruce feels his frown deepen. “Look, it’s just— There’s this case that came in the other day. Big, horrible nightmare of an appeal, the kind of thing that usually has me battening down the hatches and threatening you and our kid and our pets with a Nerf gun until the brief’s done.” Bruce nearly smiles at that—at least, until Tony glances over his shoulder at the mess of papers on his desk. “But there’s a procedural loophole, and Coulson—in a rare bolt of inspiration—thinks we can maybe bounce it _on_ that loophole instead of actually briefing it.” He whips his head back toward Bruce. “That’s not a compliment, by the way. I’m absolutely not complimenting Phil Coulson.”

Bruce releases a huffy half-laugh. “Perish the thought.”

“Right.” When Tony lifts his hands again, they land on Bruce’s upper arms, and for a moment, they linger there together: Tony rubbing his arms, Bruce trying to fight down the worry that thickens in the back of his throat. “And so, Doctor Banner—love of my actual life, father of my awesome kid, feeder of my hateful cat—I am holed up in here, annoyed at approximately everything, because I’m trying to get this ugly case dismissed before it goes from ‘that guy you made out with at the bar before you sobered up’ ugly to ‘ironic hipster moustache after three no-shave Novembers in a row’ ugly.”

Bruce narrows his eyes slightly. “You know I haven’t made out with than many guys at bars, right?”

Tony grins and lightly jabs him in the chest with his index finger. “But you’ve made out with some.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

“You know, on the one hand, it’s sexy that you keep me guessing. On the other hand, you had to learn that tongue thing _somewhere_ , so—”

Bruce snorts then, fighting hard to stand on his laughter, and Tony’s grin grows until it’s almost as bright as the sun. He kisses that grin, his own hands finding Tony’s waist and holding him close for a moment, his fingers spreading as though something as insignificant as two hands could ever pin Tony Stark to one place. Tony rests their foreheads together for a second after they pull apart, his skin warm and his breath soft against Bruce’s lips. 

“Thanks, by the way,” he says offhandedly. Before Bruce can ask, he steps back just far enough to open Bruce’s wallet and remove several singles. Tony tucks the money in his own shirt pocket—and Bruce pretends not to suck in a sharp breath when Tony slips his hand and the wallet back into their proper place.

He lingers there for a little too long, the usual breath of space they save for the words they rarely say.

“You’re incorrigible,” Bruce finally comments, and steps away.

Tony pats his ass before heading back to the desk. “And you love it,” he points out.

Bruce can’t argue with that.

 

==

 

“Wait, wait, what’s this about a birthday?” Tony demands, and Billy and Teddy abruptly stop talking.

Billy Kaplan is already sixteen, and his frame is long and gangly in a way that suggests it will always be long and gangly no matter how hard he tries to change it. He’s sitting at the breakfast nook, his science textbook spread out in front of him and his foot hitched around Teddy’s ankle, and for a half-second, he tries to hide the fact that he and Teddy have spent the last ten minutes holding hands and talking instead of studying. Under Tony’s watchful eye, though, Teddy untangles his fingers from Billy’s and ducks his head.

He also blushes from the collar of his t-shirt to his hairline.

Tony grins.

Teddy’d danced around the subject of inviting his boyfriend over all Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning, dropping well-timed comments about their weekend plans while studiously avoiding all eye contact. Bruce’d suspected that Teddy’d eventually crack under the pressure of _only_ seeing his boyfriend at school—especially since, on Wednesday night, he’d started dropping hints about needing more minutes for his phone. It’d taken Tony tossing a new prepaid card onto the kitchen island after breakfast that morning for the teen to finally suck in a deep breath and meet his eyes.

“So, uh,” he’d half-stammered, his gaze flicking over to where Bruce was pouring himself a second cup of coffee, “you said that your niece is coming over to play with Amy and that Miles’s friend Ganke’s stopping by, right?”

“He got some new Lego Hogwarts thing on eBay he wants to put together,” Miles’d volunteered around yet another doughnut hole. Bruce’d sent him a warning look, and he’d guiltily wiped powdered sugar off the corners of his mouth. “Amy’s had probably a hundred.”

“Have not,” Amy’d returned—and promptly dropped three doughnut holes back into the box. 

Bruce’d sighed at both of them, a tiny smile pressing at the corners of his lips. Teddy, on the other hand, had swallowed and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So, I thought that maybe, if they’re both having friends over, I could ask Billy over to do some homework. If that’s okay.”

“Depends on if we’re talking about homework, or ‘homework,’” Tony’d responded, air quotes and all. Teddy’d flushed pink, his gazes dropping to the floor, and Bruce’d nudged Tony with his elbow. Predictably, Tony’d waved him off—and stolen his coffee cup. “I’m just asking the important questions here, big guy. After all, if we have to give him ‘the talk,’ I think one or both of us needs to be fully prepared to—”

Teddy’d jerked his hands into the air and shaken his head hard enough that Bruce’d wondered whether his teeth rattled. “No talk,” he’d interrupted, and Tony’d smirked as he’d sipped Bruce’s office. “Definitely not. It’s just—” He’d dragged fingers through his hair. “We have a chemistry test on Monday, and I can study alone fine, but it’d be nice to have somebody else to run through the questions with.”

Bruce’d smiled. “You can definitely invite Billy over,” he’d promised, and he’d watched as the tension in Teddy’s shoulders had slowly uncoiled. “And no one,” he’d added, reaching over to remove his coffee cup from Tony’s grip, “will be providing you with any _talks_.”

Tony’d rolled his eyes. “You know the statistics on teen pregnancy, right?” he’d asked. “Because I’m just saying, there’s a high probability that these kids do _not_ know all the rules about the direct correlation between gloves and love, and if we’re not careful—”

“I think you should be more concerned about what happens if you finish that sentence,” Bruce’d replied simply, and Teddy’s surprised bark of laughter had drowned out Tony’s offended sputtering.

But Teddy’s miles away from laughing, now, his eyes trained on his textbook. Billy frowns at him before he knocks their knees together under the table. “You didn’t tell them?” he hisses. 

Teddy flinches at his boyfriend’s accusatory tone, and again when he glances up and finds Tony staring him down. Bruce knows he’s not much better; he’s standing there, armed with juice boxes and a bag of Chex mix while Teddy worries his lower lip. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he grumbles.

“Your sixteenth birthday is a _huge_ deal,” Billy retorts. Teddy fidgets uncomfortably on the bench. “Ed and Sylvia were going to—”

“And that’s why I didn’t mention it,” Teddy snaps.

He punctuates the sentence by crossing his arms, and a split-second flicker of hurt flashes across Billy’s face. Bruce abandons the snacks on the kitchen island, ready to intervene, but somehow, Tony beats him to the punch. “Okay, so, first rule of Banner-Stark household is that we don’t ruin our relationships at the kitchen table,” he says, raising his hands in what Bruce assumes is a peace-keeping gesture. Teddy snorts at that, almost smiling, and lifts his head enough to meet Tony’s gaze. Tony winks. “And two, the question I’m asking? Stress-free. No tension, no surprises.”

Teddy rolls his lips together and glances over at Billy, who shrugs. “My birthday’s on Wednesday,” he finally admits. His voice is quiet and thick, like he’s sharing a secret. “With everything that’s going on, I didn’t want to tell you guys. I just thought, if Billy came over today, we could maybe see a movie tomorrow and—”

“And conveniently skip your birthday in its entirety?” Tony interrupts. 

Teddy glances away again, and Bruce sighs. “Tony.”

“No, hold up, this is not me pulling on my judgy pants and starting in on a rant about how birthdays are sacred and should be celebrated with fireworks and doughnuts and forty different se—” Bruce quirks an eyebrow, and Tony purses his lips for a moment. “Forty different interactions of a personal nature,” he amends, and Billy chokes on his laugh before covering his mouth with his hands. “But after the frankly nightmarish roller coaster of the last week, I’d think you’d at least want the basics.”

“The basics,” Bruce repeats. At the table, Teddy’s mouth tips into a tiny smile.

“Yeah, the basics. You know, like— Hey, girls, c’mere here for a second, I need to ask you something!”

There’s the tell-tale noise of bead-filled containers rattling before Amy and Dot emerge from behind the couch and dart straight over to Tony. Their wrists, ankles, and necks are adorned with a ridiculous amount of brand-new beaded jewelry painstakingly created at the coffee table while _Aladdin_ played in the background.

Dot’d arrived a good two hours earlier, dressed in a ridiculous hot-pink dress with black leggings and yellow shoes. “It’s a losing battle,” Steve’d said with a shrug, and Bruce’d grinned as he’d accepted all of Dot’s various accessories: the jewelry bag, plus the bag of extra toys _and_ the plastic baggie with her swim suit (just in case). 

Dot, for her part, had paused in front of Amy, squinted at her for a moment, and then shoved a hand between them. Amy’d frowned, but Dot’d just wiggled her fingers. “Shake,” she’d instructed.

Lingering in the doorway, Steve’d sighed. “Dot, we talked about this.”

She’d twisted around to scowl at him, hand still dangling in front of her. “You shake with new people,” she’d retorted, “and you said to be nice to Amy like you and Daddy are nice to new people, so—”

She’d stopped in the middle of the sentence when, out of nowhere, Amy’d stepped forward and grabbed Dot’s hand in both of hers. For a moment, the girls had stared at each other, Amy clinging to Dot like a lifeline while Dot inspected Amy’s face, her outfit—just a t-shirt and jeans, purchased at the mall the week before—and finally, her hair. She’d grinned at the unruly curls before deciding, “Your hair is pretty.”

Amy’d beamed. “Tony put _Aladdin_ on the TV.”

“ _Aladdin_ ’s almost my favorite,” Dot’d returned with a huge, delighted smile, and they’d disappeared into the house before either Bruce or Steve could really processed what’d just happened.

_Aladdin_ ’s on its third play-through as the girls skid to a stop at Tony’s side. Amy’s wrapped a bead-covered string of yarn around her head like a makeshift headband, and it rattles when she tilts her head up to grin at him. Dot, for her part, wraps her fingers in the hem of Tony’s t-shirt. “Uncle Bruce promised juice and Chexes,” she reports.

“Uncle Bruce got distracted by Uncle Tony being nosy,” Bruce assures her. She tilts her head in his direction and flashes him a smile, and he can’t help but smile back. 

“And Uncle Tony—who despises talking in the third person, by the way, so thanks for that—has an important question.” Amy fidgets, her eyes darting first up at Tony and then over to Dot, but Dot just squints suspiciously. “Girls, what do we do on birthdays?”

Amy frowns slightly. “Eat cake?” she guesses.

“And have friends!” Dot chimes in. At the breakfast nook, Billy flashes Teddy what Bruce can only assume is a victory smile. “And you burn things on the grill, and then Jasper fixes them before the smoke makes the police cars come again.”

Tony’s own smug grin immediately falters. “Absolutely and totally yes, except for that last part,” he replies. When he pokes Dot in the nose, she giggles and squirms away. “In fact, as far as I’m concerned, we’re never talking about that last part again. But the rest of it, I can work with.”

He ruffles Amy’s hair, coaxing out another of her rare, beaming smiles, and then quickly turns back to the breakfast nook. Teddy and Billy are watching him intently—just as they’ve watched him the whole time, soaking in his maniacal brilliance with befuddled, half-amused stares. Bruce rolls his lips together to keep from smiling, but Tony just spreads his arms. “So, okay, look. We’ve got two schools of birthday-related thought right here, adequately represented by Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum—”

He reaches to put a hand on Dot’s head, but she immediately ducks away. When he blinks at her, she scowls. “I’m not dumb,” she says, crossing her arms.

“No, of course not, I’m not— It’s from a book.”

“What book says I’m dumb?”

Teddy snorts a laugh hard enough that Bruce swears _he_ feels it in the back of his throat, and within seconds, he’s laughing too. Tony shoots him a wounded glance, but his eyes sparkle. “Fine, ruin my literary reference with your juvenilia, I understand, but my point is this: we can do cake on your actual birthday, with candles and everything, and since it’s your birthday and not mine, I will never complain about it again.” Teddy rolls his lips together, his eyes dropping to the tabletop, and Tony rests his hands on his hips. “Or, if that sounds a little too low-key for your tastes, you can invite some friends over. We’ll even order food—because, as summarized by my one and only fairy god daughter, I am not allowed to grill without the supervision of men with a weird fondness for draft beer. But it’s totally and completely your choice.”

The kitchen falls strangely silent, the ensuing quiet marred only by the faint sounds of Jasmine and Aladdin arguing on the television. Teddy lifts his eyes only far enough to glance over at Billy, and Billy presses his lips into a tight line. They stare each other down, communicating only through raised eyebrows and aborted shrugs, but Tony—

Tony stands like a man who, ticket clutched in a white-knuckled hand, is waiting for the last lottery number to be called. 

In that moment, Bruce wants desperately to close the distance between them and settle his hand in the small of Tony’s back. Instead, he curls his fingers around the lip of the counter and waits. 

Finally, though, Teddy swallows and looks up. “It— After everything, it’d be really nice to see all my friends at once,” he admits.

“Good call,” Tony replies, and tosses the boy his phone.

 

==

 

“So, I did an okay thing with this whole _ad hoc_ birthday party, right? Like, you’re not planning for me to sleep on the couch with a dog instead of in our bed with a _you_ , yeah?”

Tony’s hands are broad and familiar when they snake under Bruce’s sweater from behind, and even though Bruce knows he _should_ bat his husband away, he smiles. Out in the yard, a motley group of teenagers gather around the fire pit, the ebb and flow of their laughter a comfortable tide of warmth in the otherwise crisp, dark September night. Amy and Dot, Bruce knows, are asleep on the living room floor, conked out from an afternoon of playing “Spy Princesses” in the backyard followed by an evening of entertaining Teddy’s friends—and eating entirely too much junk food.

The teenagers had started trickling in around three in the afternoon, arriving in staggered car pools or, in Eli Bradley’s case, in their grandmother’s rumbling town car. Bruce’d managed the visitors as best he knew how—shaking hands, offering sodas, picking abandoned plastic beads out of the carpet—but, as expected, Tony’d shone. A few times, Bruce’d lingered in a doorway or in the middle of the kitchen, basking in Tony’s _presence_ and in the carefree, casual way he’d welcomed all five of Teddy’s best friends.

“There’s technically six,” Teddy’d commented at one point, “but Tommy’s mobility is a little, uh, limited.”

“He’s in juvie,” America Chavez’d clarified. Teddy’d glared at her, but she’d shrugged as she’d kicked her legs over one of the arms of the couch. “What? I’m not gonna sugar coat it. He’s a felon, I’m a misdemeanant—”

“Good word,” Tony’d praised. He’d dismissed Bruce’s warning glance with a well-timed eye roll. “Come on, how many sixteen-year-olds know the proper use of _misdemeanant_? I bet our kid—the kid of _lawyers_ , in case you forgot—couldn’t drop it into a complete sentence.”

Miles, who’d spent the last ten minutes eating pretzel sticks and stealing hasty glances at America’s legs, choked hard enough that Ganke’d smacked him on the back. “I wouldn’t what?” he’d asked, red-faced and still slightly sputtering.

Tony’d gestured in his direction, eyebrows raised, and America’d smirked. “This fake-dad of yours can stay,” she’d informed Teddy.

Teddy’d flushed pink around the edges. When he’d dragged his fingers through his hair, he’d looked pleased and guilty all at once. “He’s pretty cool,” he’d admitted, and Bruce’s whole body had warmed.

Bruce’s body warms now, half from the familiar burn of Tony’s stubble against the back of his neck and half from the gentle spread of Tony’s fingers against his stomach. He leans into Tony’s chest, into his touch and his heat, and for just a second, he closes his eyes. It’s easy to imagine this as the status quo, Tony wrapped around him while their house is overrun with children, full of noise and laughter and joy. Remembering the years spent alone in his condo feels like remembering snippets of a movie but without sound, fragments of a quiet, empty life. His life overflows now, and he sighs when Tony kisses his earlobe.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he points out quietly.

Bruce snorts a tiny laugh. “Can I be undecided?”

“You _can_ , but please keep in mind that I turned a tragedy into a relatively happy sixteenth birthday and that the night is still young.”

Tony’s smirk curves against Bruce’s neck, and his eyes glint bright and playful in the dim light out on the deck. “Do I want to know?” 

“Yes and also no,” Tony replies, and he brushes his lips against the corner of Bruce’s mouth before disappearing back into the house.

Bruce rolls his eyes, almost chuckling, and watches as the shadows of nine teenagers stretch long and lean across the grass. Someone gestures with a stick while telling a story, its red-hot tip painting nonsensical shapes in the dark, and Bruce shoves his hands in his pockets as another wave of laughter burbles up from the fire pit. He’s learned tiny snippets about each of Teddy’s friends—David possesses a nearly photographic memory, Cassie works at the coffee shop across from the judicial center, Billy has younger brothers, America’s the daughter of two happily married mothers, Eli’s grandfather is a veteran, and Kate—

At one point during a very combative game of tag-team Mario Kart, Kate Bishop’d walked into the kitchen to fetch a soda and burst out laughing so hard that three different people’d rushed in to check on her. She’d babbled nearly incoherent nonsense about New Year’s Eve and fedoras until Bruce’d remembered that their refrigerator boasted a picture of Clint Barton from last year’s New Year’s Eve party.

Or rather, a picture of a very drunk Clint Barton wearing a waistcoat without a dress shirt, jeans, and a fedora. When Bruce’s hazy memories of that party—most of which involved Tony dragging him into dark corners to exchange heated, greedy kisses—had failed to provide any sort of useful backstory, Kate’d disappeared into the living room with her cell phone.

Ten minutes later, Bruce’s phone’d chimed in his pocket. _why is kate bishop in your house?_ Clint’s message had demanded. 

Bruce’d snorted. _She’s friends with Teddy_ , he’d replied. He’d stepped out onto the deck to monitor Amy and Dot’s latest round of Super Spy Princess Hide-and-Seek. As far as he could tell at the time, most of the rules involved curtseying. _We’re throwing him a sort of last-minute birthday party._

_please keep her away from tony_ , Clint’d sent back almost immediately.

A quick glance into the house’d revealed that, somehow, Tony’d weaseled his way onto Kate and Ganke’s Mario Kart team. _Too late_ , he’d returned.

The conversation’d devolved into seemingly random emoticons, after that.

It’s Kate Bishop who emerges onto the deck right then, followed immediately by both Ganke and Miles. The boys grin like two cats who’ve caught and agreed to share the canary, not that Bruce is necessarily surprised; over the course of the afternoon and evening, he’s overheard several conversations about the relative “hotness factor” of Teddy’s three female friends. At one point, Ganke’d caught him listening, blushed beet red, and sputtered, “But she’s hot in a smart way, like you’d expect a future president to be.”

They’d stopped admiring Teddy’s friends at that point and started hanging out with them, instead.

“Potty break,” Kate reports as she steps into the house, and Ganke mutters something about a soda as he ducks in behind her. When he tosses Miles a glance over his shoulder, Miles rolls his eyes, but he still shoos his friend along.

Bruce waits until the door closes behind them to smile at his son. “Ganke’s newest crush?” he asks. 

Miles groans. “Don’t even,” he warns, shaking his head. Bruce chuckles, but then Miles is moving to stand beside him, their shoulders almost brushing in the cold, quiet night. He’s spent the better part of the day dancing away from his parents—teenage posturing at its very best—but now he sways toward Bruce like he’s desperate for the contact. “Listen,” he says, “I— I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but Teddy—” He steals a quick glance in Bruce’s direction, and Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Teddy told me about his birthday.”

A tiny spike of something—surprise, maybe, or confusion—rises in the back of Bruce’s throat. “Oh?” he asks.

Miles swallows softly, but he nods. “He was helping me out with math again, and we were talking. I don’t even think he meant to tell me as much as it just kind of fell out of his mouth, but . . . ” He trails off with a little, uneven shrug. “After everything that’s happened, he said he felt weird. Like, you guys did so much for him and Amy—well, and me too, according to him, but all I do is live here—that he thought it’d be asking for too much.” He twists to meet Bruce’s eyes. “I didn’t want to rat him out to you and Tony, you know?”

Bruce smiles slightly and, without waiting for permission, wraps an arm around Miles’s shoulders. Miles rolls his eyes, a teenager to the very depths of his soul, but he leans into Bruce’s grip and slings an arm around his waist. They stand together for a long time, Miles smelling of smoke and autumn, before Bruce thinks to say, “I’m sure Teddy appreciates that you kept this secret for him.”

Miles offers him a small, half-sheepish smile. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Bruce replies, and he squeezes Miles a little tighter before relinquishing him back to the circle of teenagers.

It’s another ten minutes before Tony reappears out on the deck armed with an enormous sheet cake from a nearby grocery store. Steve and Bucky flank him, their arms laden down by paper plates, plastic silverware, disposable napkins and, in Steve’s case, a half-asleep, mumbling Dot.

“Before you ask,” Steve defends, his big hand lifting momentarily from Dot’s back, “Tony gave us very specific instructions about cake and cake supplies.”

“And somehow still failed to mention that you’d opened the Stark-Banner home for wayward youngsters,” Bucky adds, jerking his head out toward the fire pit. 

Tony’s grin is so heartfelt and warm that, for a moment, Bruce forgets how to breathe, and his chest, heart, and stomach all feel tight enough to choke him. But Tony’s oblivious, tearing into a package of cheap birthday candles with reckless abandon, so Bruce just shakes his head. “Banner-Stark,” he replies lightly.

Tony laughs. “You know, any time you want that name change,” he teases, and Bruce digs his elbow into his husband’s ribs as he helps him arrange Teddy’s candles on his birthday cake.

Eight teens, four adults, and one very tired little girl sing “Happy Birthday” to Teddy Altman in the near dark of a late September night, their off-key voices dissonant and still somehow the most beautiful thing Bruce has heard in a long, long time. Bucky and Steve depart immediately after the cake’s cut, but the teens linger, ducking in and out of the house for beverages and, in some cases, returning for second and third pieces of cake. Eventually, though, they all retreat back to the relative privacy of the fire pit.

Or at least, all of them except Teddy.

He putters around behind Bruce and Tony on the deck and in the kitchen, cleaning up paper plates, silverware, and leftover pizza in relative silence. When Amy disappears from the living room, it’s because Teddy’s carried her upstairs and carefully tucked her into bed; when the last remnants of the cake are carefully arranged on a plate and settled into the fridge, it’s because Teddy’s brought it inside. And when they step back out onto the deck, America’s howling laughter echoing through the yard, it’s Teddy who stops at the top of the steps down onto the grass, and Teddy who shoves his hands into his pockets. 

He glances between the two of them—Bruce first, then Tony, then Bruce again—and the longer they stand in silence, the longer Bruce feels his stomach twist itself into knots. The teen wets his lips and shifts his weight from one foot to another, all without speaking.

Finally, he sucks in a sharp breath and says, “I don’t know how to thank you.” The last word trembles helplessly, and he digs his fingers through his hair. “I mean, after everything, I just—”

“The easy answer is that you don’t,” Tony interrupts. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slouched, he somehow looks both younger and smaller than the man Bruce first met six years earlier, like the vulnerable core of brash attorney Tony Stark. He shrugs. “Just consider this part of you being one of ours. Okay?”

Teddy’s wet eyes shine in the dim glow of the house lights, but when he smiles—

When he smiles, Bruce swears he feels his own eyes dampen, because that boy looks at the two of them like they, together, hung the moon.

They’re alone on the deck when Teddy returns to his friends, and for the first time in what feels like his life, Bruce finds himself at an absolute loss for words. He stares at Tony—smiling, irrepressible, _incredible_ Tony—and feels his heart swell, three sizes bigger than when he first married the man standing next to him—and a thousand sizes bigger than he ever thought possible.

“Tony, I,” he starts, helpless words that trip out of his mouth, and Tony tips that warm, bright smile toward him. When he reaches up to sling an arm around Bruce’s neck, it’s in part to pull Bruce closer and in part to bury his fingers in the back of Bruce’s hair. The world shrinks for a moment, narrowing until all Bruce knows is Tony Stark’s smile and touch in the chill of a crisp September night.

But he sighs when Bruce kisses him slow and lazy, his hands pressing to Tony’s stomach before they reach for and settle on his sides. He licks into Bruce’s mouth like a promise or a benediction, crowds him against the deck railing so they flatten their bodies together, finds and strokes his hip like he’s a breakable, precious thing. And when they break apart, they hold onto each other for a few beats too long, soaking in so much more than each other’s warmth.

“I love you,” Bruce murmurs, words he always thinks but rarely says. Tony blinks at him for a moment, his face full of stunned, beautiful delight; when he kisses Bruce again, one hand cupping his cheek, Bruce knows without a second thought that he’s repeating the same.

“I’m making us coffee,” Tony declares when he pulls away, his nose close to Bruce’s jaw. “Because if we’re hoarding teenagers for another couple hours, we need coffee.”

“Agreed,” Bruce says, and he smiles as Tony slips out of his grip.

Tony’s still in the house, singing a Led Zeppelin song to the cat, when he digs his Blackberry out of his pocket and opens a message to Jessica Jones.

_We’ll stay Amy and Teddy’s placement_ , he types, and then leans against the deck railing to watch the kids out in the yard.


	7. The Thorny Bits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony—with some help from a guardian ad litem—learn a little more about Amy. But more than that, Bruce faces down some difficult memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a minor mention of the Pierpont fire and also for Bruce’s backstory (which features elements of his comics backstory, such as Brian Banner’s alcoholism and mental health issues). Basically, there’s some discussion of death again in this chapter. 
> 
> Nothing in the comics explicitly states that Rio Morales spoke Spanish. I like to believe that she did and perhaps taught Miles bits and pieces that he’s retained—complete with a terrible accent. 
> 
> Thanks as always to Jen and saranoh, who keep catching my bizarre typos--and who both laughed at the same line about Butterfingers.

“Can we go to your house before you go get Miles?” Amy asks in the Target parking lot.

It’s a properly breezy fall Sunday, one where the wind ruffles Bruce’s hair and Tony consistently snakes cold fingers under the sleeves and waistband of his jacket. Strangers adjust their children’s hoods and duck their heads away from the cold slices of air; dead and drying leaves catch in eddies that swirl around their ankles. At Home Depot, they lost four different paint samples to surprise gusts, and here, Amy’s curls fall out of her ponytail as she peers up at Bruce.

Tony, for his part, stops rearranging the paint cans in the back of the Prius. He squints at the girl for a moment, then jerks his thumb in Bruce’s general direction. “You know he’s sort of a big fan of the environment, right?” he asks, and Amy frowns. “He drives a hybrid, he sets the lawn sprinklers for ‘never,’ and he forces me to compost.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “You started dumping coffee grounds in my compost pile whether I wanted you to or not,” he reminds him.

As usual, Tony ignores him. He rises to his full height, paint cans and abandoned Target bags completely forgotten, and plants his hands on his hips. “Your eco-friendly, lean-green foster dad doesn’t believe in second trips to the same place, is my point. Meaning that unless you’ve manifested a fear of public bathrooms since our pit stop at Wendy’s three hours ago, we’re swinging by the mall to pick up Miles on our way home.”

Amy drops her eyes to the asphalt before she nods stiffly.

Bruce rolls his lips together.

For the last four or five hours, this breezy, sunny Sunday’s belonged to just the three of them: two men and their foster daughter. With Miles and Teddy off at the mall for movies and shopping with their respective peer groups, the errands and quick lunch at Tony’s favorite burger joint’ve felt mostly like a bonding experience, a chance to learn more about Amy. She’s bloomed like a flower for them, talking openly about her favorite subjects at school (math and art), her favorite teacher (her special education resource instructor), her favorite Disney movies ( _Aladdin_ and anything involving animals), and what she wants to be when she grows up (a veterinarian or a painter). Her open smiles and bubbly laughs had slowly replaced all her shy, half-lost moments, and a few times, Bruce’d found himself imagining the girl Amy will grow to be: thoughtful, spirited, quietly clever.

At lunch, she’d tucked her legs up to her chest as they waited for their burgers, a half-finished milkshake in front of her. She’d played with her straw for a few seconds before she’d said, “I like that I get to stay with you, now.”

Across the table, Tony’d stopped playing with his cell phone to cast Bruce a look so surprised and speechless that Bruce’s own heart’d stilled in his chest. They’d sat in silence and uncertainty for a few beats too long, old-fashioned diner music blaring through the speaker above their table, before Bruce’d remembered how to breathe—and then, how to swallow. “We’re glad that you’re staying with us,” he’d said, reaching over to squeeze Amy’s knee. 

“And Teddy,” Tony’d added, his voice suddenly bright. For all his hesitation, he’d flashed the girl a brilliant, blinding grin. “We like him too. Even if he’s not as cute.”

He’d reached across the table to press his fingertip to Amy’s nose, and Amy’d giggled as she’d smacked it away. A vicious poke war’d ensued, knocking over the salt shaker and somehow destroying Amy’s paper placemat, and the waitress’d laughed as she arrived with their plates. “Fathers and their daughters,” she’d commented conversationally, and offered Bruce a twinkling smile. 

“You should see him with our son,” Bruce’d replied with a tiny shake of his head. He’d only realized later, after they’d left a hefty tip and bought a homemade cherry pie to bring home, that he’d never corrected the waitress’s assumption.

Amy’d held his hand in the restaurant parking lot—and the next two parking lots, besides—and he’d forced himself to forget about assumptions, correct or otherwise.

Truthfully, he’d waited all Saturday night to tell Tony about texting Jessica, the words falling into place in his head only to break apart again every time he’d glanced across the deck to meet Tony’s eyes. Tony’d lingered with him until Teddy’s makeshift birthday party finally broke up, the two of them sharing a mug of Irish coffee as they’d watched the teens’ shadows dance in the flickering firelight. By midnight, they’d shaken hands with parents (Billy’s mother, Eli’s grandmother, a still skeptical Mrs. Lee), counted seatbelts in Kate Bishop’s car (“Oh my god, you’re worse than Barton,” she’d grumbled, and Tony’d shuddered violently), and forced their rapidly drooping thirteen-year-old into bed.

“Come on, it’s Saturday,” Miles’d goaded around an enormous yawn as Bruce’d half-guided, half-pushed him into bed. He’d flopped onto his rumpled covers in his smoke-scented clothes, and burrowed his face into his pillow. Bruce’d raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m _fine_ ,” he’d promised after a few beats too long, but he’d hardly lifted his head. “Just let me lay here for, like, ten minutes, and it’ll be time to kill zombies with Judge.”

He’d yawned again, and Bruce’d chuckled. “You’ll be the only person left up,” he’d pointed out. Miles’d flapped a dismissive hand at him, watching through half-hooded eyes as Bruce’d drawn the blinds and flicked off an unnecessary lamp. For a few seconds, he’d actually looked like a sleepy toddler: face slack, body splayed across the bed like a starfish, eyes drifting slowly shut. Bruce’d smiled around the tight feeling in his belly and throat. 

“At least take your shoes off before you fall asleep,” he’d said finally.

Miles’d nuzzled his cheek against his pillow. “’m not falling asleep.”

“Well, just in case,” Bruce’d replied, and he’d stroked a hand down Miles’s back while Miles’d grumbled something about him _being such a dad_.

Later, in the quiet almost-dark of the master bedroom, Bruce’d carded his fingers through Tony’s soft hair and tugged until Tony’d lifted his head away from Bruce’s hip. The memory of his goatee burning against tender skin and the hot, wet press of his lips had left Bruce momentarily useless, and so, he’d stared at him instead of speaking, studying his wide eyes and damp lips. In the glow of their bedside lamp, he’d looked wild and beautiful, and Bruce’d felt love-drunk and dizzy, all at once.

After a few seconds, he’d remembered to say, “I texted Jessica about Teddy and Amy staying with us.”

“Yeah?” Tony’d asked, his voice rough and breathless.

“Yeah.”

Tony’d smiled at him, then, his face a thousand times brighter than the one lamp still burning on the bedside table, and heat’d unfurled in Bruce’s belly when Tony’d pressed his lips to the hard plane of his hip bone. “I knew you’d come around,” he’d said against Bruce’s skin, and Bruce’d huffed out a helpless little laugh as Tony’d climbed up his body to kiss him, hard and hungry.

He’d woken up Sunday morning with a bruise blooming on his collarbone and a lingering, half-unfamiliar soreness in his hips and thighs. But those complaints—about Tony’s demands and Tony’s teeth, about beard burn and his age—had all faded away when he’d come downstairs to discover Tony and Amy discussing their plans to, quote, “to turn the office into a proper bedroom, because I’m pretty sure a seven-year-old shouldn’t be sleeping ten feet away from a first-generation iMac.”

Bruce’d rolled his eyes as he’d walked into the kitchen. “I loved that computer.”

“Yeah, well, you know how I feel about you and I _still_ wouldn’t keep you in a bedroom ten years past your expiration date,” Tony’d returned, and immediately handed Bruce his coffee cup.

The Prius is now full of the fruits of their renovation plans, weighed down with paint cans, lamps, bed sheets, bath towels, wall art, and a handful of random games, toys, and puzzles. Tony grunts and grumbles as he rearranges everything for the fourth time while the bags of bath towels sit at his feet. “This is why we buy Audis and not Toyotas,” he complains under his breath. “Trunk space.”

“You’re comparing my car to your two-seater?” Bruce asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“I’m comparing your car to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, because I’d rather have war and pestilence than _this_ ,” Tony retorts, shoving the towels on top of the paint cans.

Amy leans heavily against their empty shopping cart and says absolutely nothing. 

Somehow, Tony forces the back hatch of the Prius closed, and he coaxes Amy into a foot race to the cart corral while Bruce rolls his eyes at both of them. When she wins, the girl grins in victory and shoves her arms into the air; when Tony says _something_ about the mall and steers her back toward the car, however, her face falls. She climbs silently into the back of the Prius without glancing at either of them.

Tony catches Bruce by the belt loop before he crosses to the passenger side. “Irrational fear of shopping malls or continued irrational fear of our son?” he asks. He’s nearly whispering, his head tilted in close, and Bruce purses his lips. Tony raises his eyebrows. “Big guy, if you know important parenting information I _don’t_ and it’s not part of adorable daddy-foster daughter collusion efforts, then—”

“It’s the latter,” Bruce answers, shaking his head. Something unidentifiable—disappointment, maybe, or fear—flickers across Tony’s face, and Bruce ghosts his fingers against the inside of Tony’s wrist. “I don’t know why,” he admits, “but she’s still nervous around him. She’s asked more than once whether he’s a nice boy.”

Tony holds his eyes for a moment before he nods unevenly. “Okay,” he says, and squeezes Bruce’s hip before he heads for his side of the car.

They’re barely out of the Target parking lot, classic rock on the radio and the windows rolled down, before Tony glances at Amy in the rearview mirror. “You know how Miles ended up our kid, right?” he asks.

Amy jerks her head away from the window, wide-eyed shock evident on her face, and Bruce sighs. “Tony, that conversation wasn’t an invitation to—”

“I’m just asking a question,” Tony defends, raising one hand off the steering wheel. They pull to a stop at a light, and he twists to glance over his shoulder at Amy. “I mean, you’re pretty young for the classic birds-versus-bees talk, but I figure chances are pretty good that Jessica told you the whole story.”

In the back seat, Amy’s forehead crumples in confusion. She glances between them, studying Tony’s expression before narrowing her eyes at Bruce, and presses her lips into a tight, if thoughtful, line. “Bruce fell in love with a lady and she let him put a baby in her special incubator?” she asks carefully.

Bruce chokes on air, but Tony, apparently unfazed, bursts out laughing. The driver behind them needs to lay on his horn before Tony realizes the light’s changed, and even then, there’s laughter dancing in his eyes when he glances back at Amy again. “Okay, so, special incubators aside, no,” he says, and Amy’s deep frown returns. “Nobody in this car impregnated Miles’s mother. As far as I know, nobody in this car’s ever impregnated anybody, but that’s probably a discussion for another day.”

“Tony,” Bruce says now that he’s recovered his breath, his words a bit sharper than last time.

Tony waves him off midway through a lane change. “Miles is kind of like you,” he continues, glancing briefly at Amy as he drives. “He didn’t have anybody to stay with. His parents, they weren’t around anymore, and the uncle who took him in, he sort of headed for the hills, too. And that’s when we picked him.”

Amy tilts her head slightly, the frown slowly slipping away. She shifts her weight briefly, feet dangling from her booster seat. “Picked him how?” she finally asks.

“Okay, maybe not _picked_ ,” Tony corrects. He shrugs slightly and leans back against the headrest. “We more found him. Or found each other, I guess you could say, because I already had Bruce. It’s just that we found Miles, and he found us.”

Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Bruce can’t help glancing over at Tony, or offering him a tiny smile. Even after a year, his face still warms when he thinks about the way he stumbled into becoming a father—and a husband. “Is this your latest creative retelling?” he jokes.

Tony beams at him. “Call it whatever you want, it still ended in the greatest courthouse wedding of all time.” He reaches over to squeeze Bruce’s thigh, and in the back seat, Amy surrenders to a bright grin of her own. “Anyway, Miles didn’t have anybody,” Tony explains, “and so, he came to stay with us. Bruce first, then both of us together, and _then_ —after some worry and some heartache and a frankly ridiculous amount of paperwork regarding our shared fitness to parent—he got to stay with us for good and become our kid. Forever and ever, amen.”

Amy immediately wrinkles her nose. “Amen is for church.”

“It was almost a religious experience,” Tony responds. Bruce rolls his eyes, ready to admonish him for the third time in as many stop lights, but the hand on his thigh squeezes a second time as they glide to a stop. “But in all seriousness, here’s my point,” Tony presses. He meets Amy’s gaze in the rearview mirror, and Bruce purses his lips. “There are millions of kids in the world—good, bad, nice, mean, you name it. And out of all those kids to choose from, we landed ours. This awesome, smart, thoughtful kid who we love as hard as we love one another—and trust me, that’s a whole hell of a lot.” He works his jaw for a moment, the car silent, and Amy stares at him as though he’s revealing all the secrets of the universe. “So, the next time you’re not sure about him, do me a favor and remember that we picked him. And we picked _good_.”

They sit there in the quiet of the car, interrupted only by the sounds of traffic and the wind whistling in through the open windows, before the corner of Amy’s mouth finally kicks up in a tiny grin. “You picked a dog who trips on the stairs,” she points out.

Her deadpan sincerity is so completely compelling and, as far as Bruce can tell, _completely_ fake that Bruce snorts a laugh. He covers his mouth with his hand and glances out the window. 

Tony, on the other hand, rolls his eyes. “I definitely did _not_ give him a self-fulfilling name by naming him after a candy bar no matter what lies Pepper will tell you later,” he returns, and Amy laughs as the light turns green.

Miles and several friends are lingering on the benches outside the mall when Tony pulls into the drop-off lane, their mouths stained by slushies and probably a dozen other types of unhealthy food court snack food. Miles leaps to his feet the second he spots the car, and Bruce watches as he engages in all the usual rituals of a thirteen-year-old about to be separated from his friends; he high-fives Judge and Ganke, quirks Lana’s beanie until it hangs over eyes, and wraps Briana up in a tight hug. The hug drags on for several seconds, Miles’s head bending close to the girl’s ear while she fists her hands in his hoodie, and Tony releases a low whistle.

“We might need to warn him about ‘special incubators,’” he intones, and Bruce twists around for the express purpose of glaring at him. He raises both hands in mock-innocence, eyebrows climbing into his hairline. “I’m just saying that every thirteen-year-old harbors, you know, _thoughts_ about the pretty girl with a stripe of pink in her hair and a lot of dangly earrings.”

Bruce frowns at him. “I’m not sure I harbored those kinds of thoughts at thirteen,” he admits.

“No, you probably would’ve been into the sexy playboy who graduated a couple years early, if you’d known him back then,” Tony replies, and his flashy, self-congratulatory smile is so frustrating and endearing that Bruce can only roll his eyes. 

Miles finally throws himself into the back seat a few minutes later, armed with a half-finished Icee and a bag emblazoned with the name of the mall’s sweet shop. “Sorry,” he says breathlessly, and Tony quirks an all-knowing eyebrow. Bruce sighs at him. “Me and Briana got to talk at the movie, and then Lana had this story about her mom, so—”

“Is the girl with the pink hair your girlfriend?”

Tony hits the gas pedal hard enough that the entire car jerks, and when Bruce turns to glance over his shoulder, Miles is staring slack-jawed at the girl in the booster seat next to him. Amy’s watching him carefully, her eyes clear and cautious as she plays with the hem of her jacket. 

“You hugged her like Billy and Teddy hug,” she continues. Tony snickers audibly, and Bruce reaches over to elbow him as they pull out of the drop-off lane. Miles just keeps gaping. “Teddy said that you only hug that tight when you’re boyfriends, but she’s a girl, so—”

“We’re just friends,” Miles cuts in. His voice is high and squeaky, and Bruce rolls his lips together to hide his smile. A dark blush climbs across Miles’s cheeks, and he viciously stabs at the remnants of his Icee with his straw. “Briana’s really smart and funny, but I don’t have a girlfriend. We just wanted to hug goodbye, or whatever.”

Amy nods, swinging her legs idly. She glances out the window for a few seconds, her expression still thoughtful, before she glances back at Miles. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asks.

Miles chokes on his drink. “What?”

“The boy who came over, is he your boyfriend?” Amy continues. She’s not needling Miles, exactly, but something in her tone suggests she senses Miles’s discomfort. Tony cups a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing aloud. “Or the tall boy with your friends?”

Tony releases a strangled sound and clamps his hand down harder. Bruce glances over his shoulder at his flushing, mortified son. “You do spend a lot of time pointing out the number of same-sex couples we know,” he points out.

“ _Dad_ ,” Miles squeaks helplessly, and Tony’s laughter bursts out of him like a gunshot. The car swerves slightly as his laugh lines crinkle into deep, beautiful trenches. In the backseat, Amy beams like she’s won the lottery.

Miles, for his part, flicks Icee off his straw until bits of blue slush cling to Tony’s hair.

It’s not perfect, Bruce knows, but with the windows rolled down and Tony reaching back to smack Miles’s straw from his hands, it’s a near thing.

 

== 

 

“So,” Jessica Drew says, one hand planted on her hip, "is one of my clients living in your house, or are you just happy to see me?"

“That depends mostly on whether I can watch the two of you together,” Tony answers, and Bruce rolls his eyes at both of them.

It's a mostly average Wednesday night in what Bruce's come to consider their new normal, the house full of light and sound as he futilely attempts to finish up a witness list for an upcoming parental rights termination trial. Tony stands at the kitchen island in a ratty t-shirt and rattier jeans, a pen clutched between his teeth as he skims over some unknown document for the case he and Phil are still working on. He turns his nearly forgotten coffee mug around in idle circles as he works, not drinking out of it so much as _toying_ with it. Bruce's reminded him three times that he hates cold coffee, but Tony's just shrugged at him each time.

At the breakfast nook, Teddy squints at his history book, his face creased in thoughtful concentration. Miles's science book and unfinished lab report sit abandoned in the space across from him along with his iPod and three different pencils.

“Bree's on the phone,” Miles'd announced breathlessly ten minutes earlier, and Bruce'd glanced up from his iPad in time to watch his son half-spring, half-fall from the bench. Teddy'd rolled his lips together to hide his smile. “I'm gonna— I mean, if it's okay, my homework's mostly done, so—”

He'd waved his phone in the direction of the stairs, and Bruce'd shaken his head. “Twenty minutes,” he'd warned, and Miles's starburst grin had felt like the least-subtle thank you on the planet.

Traipsing in from the office with his freshly reprinted document, Tony'd stared at Miles's swiftly retreating back. “Yeah, he's harboring approximately eight million impure thoughts,” he'd decided.

Bruce'd rolled his eyes. “He's thirteen.”

“I was thirteen once,” Teddy'd remarked knowingly, and Tony's insufferable victory smirk had lingered for several very long minutes.

Miles is still upstairs, though, so Jessica slings her messenger bag onto the empty stretch of bench before resting her hands on her hips. “I'd say you could join in,” she tells Tony, “but I take it on pretty good authority that you don't play nicely with others.”

Tony shrugs and drops his pen into his palm. He scratches something in the margin without glancing up. “From what I hear, neither do you. We'd have to take turns.”

Bruce frowns, ready to scold _both_ of them, when Teddy lifts his head away from his reading. He's frowning, too, his brow furrowed not in thought but in what Bruce suspects is quiet horror. “Should I maybe leave the room while you guys navigate whatever you're navigating?” he asks, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

Jessica pauses, her windbreaker hanging halfway off her shoulders, and eyes the teen. For a moment, her dark gaze sweeps over his face, shoulders, and posture, obviously sizing him up.

Teddy swallows.

“You sixteen yet?” she finally asks.

“Tomorrow.”

She shrugs. “Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re old enough for the innuendo party," she decides, and when Teddy laughs—a surprised, half-embarrassed bark that leaves his face red and warm—she grins at him.

Jessica’d called yesterday morning, interrupting the middle of Bruce’s heavy docket day with her light, heavily caffeinated voice. “I need to bug your kid,” she’d said in lieu of an actual greeting, and Bruce—standing in the hallway between hearings—had felt his brow crease. He’d spent the better part of his morning arguing with Patsy Walker about HIPAA waivers and medical decision-making, and his brain’d still felt a little scrambled. 

“Miles’s case has been closed for ten months,” he’d finally pointed out.

He’d sworn he could hear the eye roll that followed. “Not your actual, legal kid,” she’d returned dismissively. “One of your newbies. Short, curly hair, has a thing for kangaroos?”

Bruce’d rubbed a hand over his face. “Right, you’re Amy’s guardian ad litem.”

“No, I’m _Teddy’s_ guardian ad litem. Who the hell is Amy?” Bruce’d snorted a laugh at her perfect deadpan delivery, and on the other end, she’d cackled. When someone in the background’d immediately responded by shushing her, she’d groaned aloud. “Captain Sparkle Killjoy—yes, Danvers, that _is_ your new nickname, thank you for asking—is in a mood today,” she’d continued, “so I’ll skip the ‘thought you’d seen the last of me’ jokes and cut right to the chase: when can I poke your dogs and also your foster daughter?”

Bruce’d chuckled even as he’d shaken his head. “They’re Tony’s dogs,” he’d reminded her.

“Well, stop slacking on the step-dog-parent adoption and also, answer the question,” she’d retorted, and Bruce’d finally given in and laughed.

But the dogs are outside now, along with—

“Please tell me you didn’t chain _this_ one in the basement,” Jessica complains as Bruce hands her a cup of coffee. “There’s so much paperwork when you do that.”

He smiles, almost chuckling again, and shakes his head. “She’s outside with Dot.”

“Dot?” Jessica repeats.

“Goddaughter,” Tony clarifies with a wave of his hand. He picks up his coffee mug, gesturing with it. “Blonde, bossy, subject to our whims while her dads attend parent-teacher kindergarten conferences. I assume they spell conference with a ‘k,’ too.” He shrugs, raises his cup to his lips—and sputters the second he helps himself to a sip. Bruce raises his eyebrows, his mouth tightly pursed to hide his smile, and watches as his husband forces himself to swallow despite his stricken face. “I’ve had better,” he wheezes before turning to dump his cold coffee into the sink.

“I’m sure Bruce’s said that before,” Jessica offers conversationally, and the strangled snort of laughter that bursts out of Teddy sounds downright painful.

Bruce nearly intervenes, ready to cut off the completely inappropriate comeback that’s undoubtedly brewing on the tip of Tony’s tongue, but then Miles barrels down the stairs. He’s grinning, almost starry-eyed in his joy, and Tony stops refilling his mug to mouth _impure thoughts_ in Bruce’s direction.

Bruce sighs.

“Sorry,” Miles starts as he rounds the island, phone still clutched in his hand. “Lana’s birthday is in two weeks, and since she’s older than us, Bree wants to do this big surprise thing for—”

When he spots Jessica, he freezes, his whole body locking and his voice abruptly cutting itself off in a helpless little croak. Jessica quirks an eyebrow at him, her lips twitching into some ghostly approximation of a smile. Miles just shifts his weight between his feet.

Finally, he asks, “You know I got adopted, right? Case closed, no more guardian ad litem meetings?”

Jessica shrugs. “Until you’re a juvenile offender and I’m bailing you out with your parents’ blessing, sure.”

When Miles’s shoulders start to sag, Tony flaps a hand at him. “We’d hire better,” he promises, his eyes trained on the stack of papers in front of him. “Which, granted, not a tall order, but . . . “

He trails off, leaving Jessica to roll her eyes at him. When she pointedly scratches her nose using only her middle finger, Teddy snickers and ducks his head back toward his history book. Miles, on the other hand, just rolls his lips together. “You think I’m going to break the law?” he asks cautiously.

“You mean it’s not a foregone conclusion?” she retorts, but the damage is done: Miles’s face creases into a dark frown. Bruce bites back a groan, ready to snap at her, but she beats him to the punch by reaching out and clapping Miles on the shoulder. “You are a bastion of brains and sense in a house full of crazy, and I need you to stay that way,” she promises him, and a tiny smile starts to creep across Miles’s face. “I’m here for Amy. Need to make sure she’s doing okay, given all the crap that’s blown up in her face over the last couple weeks.”

For the briefest of seconds, Miles narrows his eyes as though he’s deep in thought. Then, unexpectedly, he grins. “So I shouldn’t tell you about how they chain her and Teddy up in the garage, right?”

Tony snorts his fresh coffee hard enough that he’s forced to clamp a hand over his mouth while both Jessica and Teddy burst out laughing. Bruce hides his smile behind his own coffee mug, shaking his head as Miles and his former guardian ad litem exchange very enthusiastic high-fives. “Banner, I love your kid,” she declares.

“ _He_ is the thing we’re not sharing,” Bruce replies seriously, and he smiles when Tony reaches over for the express purpose of squeezing his hip. 

After Jessica’s finished about half of her coffee—and, more importantly, after she’s bantered with Miles about school, his friends, and life with “two new part-time siblings”—Bruce leads her out onto the deck to collect the girls. It’s late enough that the sun’s mostly hidden behind the trees, its last fingers of light painting the sky vibrant shades of purple and blue, and for a moment Bruce stands against the deck railing and watches the girls caper about the grass with the dogs. They’re playing another of Dot’s made-up games back by the fire pit, their bodies mostly hidden by some strategically rearranged lawn chairs. Butterfingers trips over himself in his attempt to hide at their sides, and their laughter stretches through the near-dark.

“Looks like she’s doing pretty okay for herself,” Jessica says, and Bruce twists to glance over at her. She’s tipped forward, her elbows on the railing and her coffee mug pressed between her palms; when he blinks at her, she sighs and rolls her eyes. “I know that you think I’m both clinically insane _and_ incapable of human emotion,” she says with a one-shouldered shrug, “but I’ve been Amy’s guardian ad litem since the beginning. I’ve seen every meltdown, dried every tear. I’m allowed to worry.”

Bruce presses his lips together to hide his smile. “I never said you didn’t feel human emotion,” he points out.

“Yeah, except I know my reputation around your kind,” she retorts, and offers him a split-second wink before she whistles.

The whistle’s almost hair-splitting, loud enough and long enough that it cuts through the night air like a siren, and both dogs freeze in their tracks the second they hear it. Two small heads immediately pop up from behind the lawn chairs, Dot’s blonde hair shining like a beacon in the dying light, and then, just as suddenly, it’s a race to the deck. The dogs beat the girls there, Dummy shoving his face between Jessica’s legs while Butterfingers slams into her side; within seconds, Amy’s joining them, throwing herself bodily into her guardian ad litem’s grip. Jessica stumbles backwards, almost losing her balance, but then she’s easily swinging Amy up onto her hip and burying her face in unkempt curls. For a moment, Bruce can imagine the eighteen months of tearful meetings and humane society playdates that’ve drawn the two together.

“I missed you _so_ much,” Amy murmurs into a place near Jessica’s neck. Jessica just rubs her back in lieu of an answer.

And Dot, leaves in her hair and mud on her dress, screws up her face into a deep and abiding frown. “Who’s this?” she asks, tilting her head up toward Bruce. “I don’t know her.”

“ _That_ is Miss Jessica Drew, the woman who just might ruin our adorable foster daughter with evil guardian ad litem black magic voodoo while you and I are eating ice cream.” When Bruce and Dot both twist around, it’s just in time to watch Tony open the door and shoo both the dogs inside. Dot plants her hands on her hips, still frowning, and Tony raises his eyebrows. “What? You don’t want ice cream? Because last I checked, ice cream was sort of your favorite thing, and since I bought your favorite flavor, I figured—”

“I want to play with Amy,” Dot replies sharply. Tony tilts his head to one side, a completely silent challenge, and the girl’s shoulders start to slump. Over the last few months, Dot’s started to recognize and respect non-verbal warnings from just about everyone other than Steve. Tony, predictably, finds this hilarious. “I don’t want to go inside if I’m going to miss saying goodbye. Because then I’ll miss Amy, and I’ll be sad.”

“Funny how nobody said _anything_ about missing out on goodbyes,” Tony responds. Dot wrinkles her nose, her whole face caught up in thought, and Tony opens the screen door a second time. “Ice cream now, goodbyes later. And you keep stalling, I’ll remove ice cream from the bargaining table.”

Dot crosses her arms, another retort clearly on the horizon, but Amy wriggles out of Jessica’s grip and lands gracelessly back on her own two feet. She reaches for Dot—half, Bruce thinks, out of a need to keep her balance—and the girls stumble into a clumsy hug. “I promise I’ll say goodbye,” Amy says, her fingers balling in Dot’s shirt.

The other little girl steps back to stare at her, her blue eyes wide and obviously worried. “Promise?”

“Pinky swear,” Amy returns, and they walk through a complicated finger-linking process before Dot finally trots into the house, her head held high.

The second the door closes behind her, Jessica grins like she’s just won the lottery. “Hey, look at you! You made a friend!”

Amy shakes her head, curls tumbling out of her already-loose ponytail. “No,” she corrects, “I made a fairy godsister.”

She explains about the concept of fairy godsisters and a thousand other things over the next half-hour, chattering happily as Jessica sits behind her and braids her long, tangled hair. A cool breeze blows by occasionally, its fingers sneaking under Bruce’s sweater and leaving him shivering, but Amy responds every time by burrowing closer to her guardian ad litem and continuing the conversation. Jessica drops in occasional questions—about school, about her after-school program, about therapy, about her mom—and Amy answers every last one, shrugging her way through each follow-up and subject change. 

By the time Amy’s regaling them with a dramatic retelling of Teddy’s birthday party, Jessica’s finished her coffee, and Bruce leaves them alone to step inside and refill it. _The Little Mermaid_ plays on the TV in the living room, Dot staring at it with wide eyes as she finishes her ice cream, and she scowls at Bruce when he ruffles her hair. Tony kisses him on the temple as he reaches the coffee pot, and he lingers inside for a few minutes, leeching heat and watching Miles grumble at his lab report.

When he finally steps outside, he discovers Amy’s staring at her feet, her face dark and half-lost as she toes at the deck slats. Jessica thanks him for the coffee but immediately abandons it to touch Amy’s shoulder; the girl jerks away, her whole body flinching.

Bruce’s stomach churns like he’s attempting to digest a stone, but Jessica just sighs. “We talked about this, Amy,” she says gently, but Amy completely ignores her. “Ed, Sylvie, and Tristan, they’re gone, like your _abuela_. That’s why you and Teddy moved here, remember?” When the girl remains slightly, her face shadowed by a few loose curls, Jessica presses her lips into a tight line. “You understand that, right? You can’t see them anymore. You can love them and miss them, but they’re not coming back.”

Silence sweeps out across the yard, broken only by the occasional call of a cricket or the creaking of the breeze through the bare-limbed trees. Amy raises her hand once, brushing her hair from her face, but Bruce suspects she’s brushing away a few quiet tears, too. She draws in a deep breath, her whole body trembling slightly; this time, when Jessica reaches out to stroke her back, she melts into the woman’s touch. Bruce hovers helplessly, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, while Amy presses her face into Jessica’s shirt.

“I just want to see them one more time,” she murmurs, and for one, painful second, Bruce swears he can hear her heart breaking into tiny pieces. Jessica smiles, the warmth never quite reaching her eyes, and rubs her hand along Amy’s side. “They left forever, and I just want to say goodbye.”

“I know,” Jessica replies, rocking the girl as her face slowly crumples. She tips forward, resting her cheek against Amy’s curls, and Bruce swallows around the thick feeling in the back of his throat. “I’ve been there, and trust me: I know.”

 

==

 

That night, after long goodbyes with both Jessica and Dot, a lightning-round review of spelling words, and a conversation about the importance of toothpaste in dental hygiene, Amy peeks up at Bruce from her cocoon of covers and asks, “Do you miss your dead people?”

The upstairs office—Amy’s bedroom, according to the sticker-covered sign hanging on the door—is a disaster of epic proportions, consisting mostly of Goodwill boxes, old furniture marked for large item pick-up, and the folded-up sofa-sleeper. Large “test patches” of paint color cover one wall, while another boasts the peeling remnants of decade-old wallpaper.

Amy’s bed, delivered two days earlier and covered in sheets she selected herself, is a mountain of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals stolen from the collection of toys Dot stores at their house. Every morning, the floor’s a minefield of discarded bed linens and dropped toys, but in the last two weeks, Bruce’s discovered that Amy only feels secure when she’s bundled up and hidden from the world. 

He knows that feeling well.

Downstairs, Tony croons a Queen song at the dogs; upstairs, in the relative quiet of the bedrooms, Bruce pauses with his fingers on the bedside lamp. The butterflies from Amy’s nightlight dance in the room’s half-dark. “My dead people?” he asks carefully.

She nods, her big eyes trailing over his face. “You said you knew dead people. Your grandma and grandpa, your friends.”

He swallows around the thick feeling in the back of his throat and forces a tiny smile. “That’s true.”

“Do you miss them?”

Bruce thinks for a moment of a woman with dark hair and eyes that always twinkled, of textbooks filled with stars and nights out in the dewy grass, of a flowery smell he never learned the name of and gentle fingers through his hair. He remembers her in fragments, in astronomy lessons with Miles and his own reflection, and his chest tightens as the images fade like fireworks. 

When he sits on the edge of the bed, it’s to brush Amy’s curls out of her face. “I do.”

“Do Tony and Miles?”

He nods. “Very much.” 

Amy nods along with him. “Okay,” she replies, and only closes her eyes after Bruce flicks off the lamp.

Tony’s still working in the kitchen when he wanders downstairs, loading the dishwasher as his hips sway to the music that lives only in his head. Bruce smiles softly at the sight of him—distracted, irrepressible Tony Stark—and again when Tony glances over his shoulder for the express purpose of offering him a flirty wink. Bruce rolls his eyes, but he also walks up behind him and wraps arms around his waist.

He kisses the back of Tony’s neck, and Tony sighs. “You turn into the tactile husband, people’ll talk.”

“People already talk too much,” Bruce replies, and he breathes in Tony’s scent and sways with him.

 

==

 

“Did you go to your mom’s funeral?” Miles asks quietly, and Bruce glances up from his book.

It’s a peaceful, sunny Sunday morning, unseasonably warm and with a pleasant breeze snaking through the trees as Bruce enjoys a cup of his spicy “magic” tea and a random novel selected from the ever-growing pile on their bedside table. Hours before, Tony and Miles had disappeared in the Audi, muttering something about _important secret shopping trips_ before the car sped out the circle drive and away; Bruce knows from the number of slammed cabinets that really, they’d run out for groceries, dishwasher detergent, and an entirely unhealthy lunch.

There’s mustard on Miles’s t-shirt. Burgers, then.

Bruce slides a scrap of paper into his book and sets it on the small table beside his deck chair. “Do you really want the answer to that question?” he replies gently. 

Miles presses his lips into a thin, dark line. “Kind of?” 

“Okay,” Bruce replies, and gestures to the chair next to him.

He and Tony’d both risen with the dawn that morning, climbing out of bed into the almost eerie quiet of a house with three sleeping children and two sleeping dogs. Tony’d started the coffee maker while Bruce’d showered, stepped into his own shower while Bruce’d shaved, and cleaned up his goatee while Bruce’d tugged on comfortable clothes for what’d promised to be a long day. When Tony’d wandered back into bedroom, he’d smelled like aftershave and toothpaste, and they’d shared lingering kisses in the middle of the floor before the extra alarm on Bruce’s phone finally chimed. Bruce’d reached over and shut it off, but then he’d returned, holding onto Tony’s hips for entirely too long.

“Kids,” Tony’d finally said, his mouth close to Bruce’s ear. “Kids, dark clothes, Jessica here no later than ten.”

“I know,” Bruce’d replied, and kissed him on his jaw before finally stepping out of his embrace—and then, out of the bedroom.

Jessica Jones’d arrived just after noon the day before, her body and manner both tightly coiled. “The Pierpont funeral is tomorrow morning,” she’d explained out on the front stoop, her voice a secretive whisper even as Bruce’d felt the breath rush out of his chest. He’d opened his mouth, a hundred questions on the tip of his tongue, but she’d just raised a hand. “Ed’s dad called me yesterday,” she’d continued with a shake of her head. “He hadn’t had my contact information, just Teddy’s, but Teddy’s phone was lost in the fire and— Long story short, he wanted to invite the kids to the funeral. For closure, he said.”

Bruce’d snorted. “Closure.”

“It’s a real thing,” Jessica’d replied, and he’d resisted the urge to roll his eyes by shoving his hands in his pockets. A lazy, late-fall bee’d landed on the wall, and he’d studied that instead of meeting the social worker’s eyes. “I talked to Jessica Drew and Amy’s therapist, and they both think it might be good for her. A chance to sort of connect up the concept of death with the actual thing. Teddy, on the other hand . . . ” She’d trailed off, her voice almost a sigh, and Bruce’d glanced over at her. She’d shrugged. “I’m worried about Teddy.”

Bruce’d frowned. “Why? All things considered, he seems to be doing better than Amy.”

“Or he’s pretending to do better,” Jessica’d replied, and they’d stared at each other for a long time before Bruce’d led her into the house.

Teddy’d erupted out of his chair at news of the funeral, pacing across the living room like a caged animal while Bruce, Tony, and Amy’d looked on. In the kitchen, Miles’d pretended to fiddle with his cell phone, but every time Bruce’d glanced his direction, he’d caught the boy staring. Twice, he’d mouthed _upstairs?_ —a question rather than a command, his eyebrows raised and his head tilted—and twice, Miles’d shaken his head.

Teddy, on the other hand, had dragged fingers through his thick shock of blond hair and gaped at Jessica. “Are you saying we shouldn’t go?” he’d demanded after she’d finished her initial explanation, his posture tight and challenging. 

Jessica’d raised both her hands. “No,” she’d replied, “but I am saying that I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“And what if I don’t care if it’s a good idea? I’m sixteen, Jess—”

“As of Thursday,” Jessica’d pointed out calmly.

“—and I can go if I want to.” When she’d pursed her lips at him, her shoulders tightening, he’d crossed his arms over his chest. “I can,” he’d repeated sharply. “I have friends who drive and a bus card. You can’t really _stop_ me.”

The hard edge to his tone’d caused Amy to curl into herself, her face tilted down toward a half-napping Jarvis. Jessica’d tightened her jaw. “As your social worker and therapist, I can absolutely stop you. I’m not saying that’s on the table, but that—”

“That you’d rather leave me a fucked-up kid in foster care than a guy who pays the respect to his last set of fake parents?” Teddy’d shot back.

Bruce’d opened his mouth to snap at him—about his language, certainly, but also about his tone—but Tony’d beaten him to the punch with a single sharp, “ _Nope_.” They’d stared at each other for a moment after that, the teen’s hands gripping his thick arms while Tony, slouch-shouldered, leaned comfortably against the wall. When Teddy’d finally sighed, his whole body’d deflated, and Bruce’d watched tears spring into his eyes.

In the end, he’d flopped onto the couch next to Amy, stroking her curls as she stroked Jarvis’s soft belly.

And the next morning, after the dust’d settled and Jessica’d agreed to cart both children to the Pierpont funeral, Bruce’d wandered downstairs with a sleepy Amy to find Teddy standing at the kitchen counter. He’d worn black slacks and a sleeveless undershirt, his hands pressed to the counter as he stared out the window over the kitchen sink.

When he’d finally noticed Bruce, he’d forced a tiny smile. “I poured coffee for you and Tony,” he’d said, sliding the mug along the island. “As an apology.”

“Thanks,” Bruce’d replied, and he’d saved his smile for when Amy’d plastered herself against Teddy’s side and hidden her face against his shirt.

Teddy and Amy are still gone as Miles settles onto the chair at Bruce’s side, undoubtedly caught up at one after-funeral event or another. Bruce remembers the countless luncheons and receptions he’s attended over the years, a drink sweating in his hand as he listens to all the concerted attempts to replace tears with laughter. He’s never understood the forced joviality of those parties, the attempts to swallow the pain with the help of cheap wine and cheaper beer.

Grief, he thinks, should be private.

His son stares at him, his eyes wide and cautious, and Bruce sighs. He scrubs a hand over his face for a moment before he finally answers, “I was young when my mother died.”

Miles immediately nods. “Six or something, right?”

“Right,” Bruce answers. He tips his face toward the sky, studying the long, bare branches that stretch up into the sunlight. “Her death was— I don’t think I’ve told you much about it, but it was unexpected. They couldn’t hold the funeral right away, not until they figured out— Well, not until they investigated everything that happened.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Miles shift his weight around on the lounge chair. He sighs. “By the time she’d died, my mother’s relationship with her family had fallen apart. My grandfather came to identify her, but short of that, there wasn’t really anyone to mourn her.”

“Not even your aunt?” Miles asks. There’s something strained, almost shocked in his voice, but he shrugs when Bruce glances at him. “I know you lived with your dad’s sister, but, I mean, they were like sisters. Didn’t that mean anything?”

Bruce forces a tiny smile. “They hardly knew each other,” he admits, shaking his head. “My aunt and my father parted ways probably before I was even born. And after everything that happened surrounding my mother’s death . . . ” He pulls in a long, shaky breath, almost chuckling to himself. “My father’s family was never going to help my mother. Not because they’re bad people, but because of my father.”

“Some family,” Miles mutters. Bruce raises his eyebrows, and his son snorts as he rolls his eyes. “My dad and my uncle hated each other sometimes,” he explains with an agitated, Tony-like hand wave. “My dad thought my uncle was an echo of all the awful things he used to be before he got his life together, and I think my uncle thought my dad sold himself out to be a good person. But every time my uncle needed help, my dad was there. Making his pissed-off disappointed face, maybe, but he was there.”

Bruce chuckles lightly. “I can’t imagine you ever experienced that face first hand,” he teases, and Miles reaches over to shove his shoulder. He gently shoves him back, a shoulder rub more than anything else, and Miles flashes him a warm smile. He tries to return the favor. “Families are hard, sometimes,” he admits after a few seconds of silence. “My father’s father—my grandfather, not that I ever met him—was not a good man. He hurt a lot of people, including his children, and when my aunt noticed her brother heading down the same path, I think she avoided the pain by avoiding him. The fact that it included my mother and me, well, that just counted as collateral damage.” He shakes his head. “I’m sure my aunt mourned my mother in her own way, just like my mother’s family mourned her. It just meant that instead of a full funeral, they cremated her—and that I went to church with my grandfather the day he came into town to pick up her ashes.”

Miles nods slightly, dropping his eyes to his lap. He picks at a hangnail for a moment, his brow furrowed, before he asks, “What happened to your father?” Bruce’s chest seizes hard enough that he feels momentarily nauseous, his whole body tensing, but Miles never glances up. “I know he’s dead, but— You barely ever say anything about him, not even when Tony talks about _his_ dad, and—”

“Wait, we’re having the great ‘is Brian Banner a worse parent than Howard Stark’ debate without me?” Tony suddenly chimes in, and Bruce lifts his head just in time to discover his husband looming behind his deck lounger. He leans his arms on the top of the chair for the express purpose of running his fingers through Bruce’s hair, and he grins when Bruce rolls his eyes. “Because I know competition for Nobel prizes is supposed to be fierce and everything, but nothing compares to the ‘worst father in the universe’ contest waged by both of your grandfathers.”

“Can you even count them as my grandfathers if I’ll never meet them?” Miles questions.

“Yes. Because that way, when you’re inevitably asked about your extended family, you can honestly say that your grandfathers were each the spawn of Satan and that you’re grateful their sons turned out okay.” Miles scoffs and rolls his eyes, his face screwing up into a frown, and Tony reaches over to skim a hand over the top of his head. “Come on, there’s at least a half-dozen ice-cream sandwiches in the freezer with your name on it, I think the least we can do is—”

“He was sent to the state mental hospital around the time my mother died.”

Bruce only really recognizes his own voice when he _hears_ it, and the hot press of both Miles and Tony’s eyes on him causes his neck and ears to warm. He rubs his hand over his face for a moment, skewing his glasses; he removes them, weighing them between his fingers before he says anything else. When Bruce tilts his head back to glance at Tony, he’s pursing his lips, his face curious and worried in equal measures. Miles just gapes openly.

Bruce swallows. “My father,” he explains gingerly, “was a genius, but he was also an alcoholic. I think I’ve mentioned that before. His therapists at Dalton—then called the Dalton Center for the Criminally Insane, up in Warren County—thought he drank to self-medicate. He suffered paranoid delusions at times, signs of bipolar disorder at others, and— Well, either way, he was seriously ill.” He plays with the arm of his glasses for a moment before he glances over at Miles. “He lived at Dalton until he passed away when I was in graduate school.”

“When you were in India?” Miles asks quietly.

“Before,” Bruce replies. “The semester immediately before, honestly.”

Miles nods, his gaze dropping back down to his hangnail as silence sweeps in around them. Tony’s fingers lightly scrub along Bruce’s scalp, and when Bruce tips his head back to glance up at him, the other man smiles gently. They watch each other for a few seconds, the quiet tense but not uncomfortable, before Tony dips his head and presses his lips against Bruce’s hairline. The tiny, intimate gesture coaxes a smile from Bruce, and he touches the side of Tony’s cheek before he pulls away again.

Next to him, Miles wrinkles his nose. “Just because Teddy and Amy aren’t here doesn’t mean you need to start with all the kissing,” he admonishes them. 

Bruce grins at him, nearly laughing, but Tony just raises his eyebrows. “You know, speaking of kissing, what _is_ up with you and Briana? Because we’ve gone from occasional conversations about her to, like, full-on phone calls and hugging, and I feel like there are some special conversations that come with you having a girlfriend.”

Heat floods Miles’s face, but he hides it by pulling off the chair’s back cushion and battering Tony in the chest. Tony laughs, his voice echoing through the yard, and the teen promptly hits him a second time. “You’re worse than Amy!” he protests. “Next, you’re going to ask me if I’m kissing _Ganke_ , too!”

“We’ll love you regardless of who you love,” Bruce reminds him, and Miles flings the cushion at him instead of answering.

Later, long after Teddy and Amy arrive home from the funeral, their eyes red but their faces warm with smiles, Tony sidles up next to Bruce in the living room. Amy, still in her black dress and sparkly silver headband, sits cross-legged on the floor as she plays her sixth or seventh round _Guess Who_ against a surprisingly useless Miles; on the couch, Teddy balances Tony’s laptop on one knee as he and Billy run through flashcards for an upcoming Spanish test over Skype.

At one point, ten minutes earlier, Amy’d craned her neck back and corrected Teddy on the word for _apple_. Now, she and Miles throw random Spanish words into their questions, Amy giggling when Miles mispronounces, well, almost everything.

Bruce assumes Tony’s watching the kids until there’s a gentle pressure against his hip, and he blinks to discover that the other man’s staring _him_ down. He leans into Bruce’s personal space until Bruce slides an arm around his waist, his eyes never blinking away. As always, Bruce feels his breath still, his whole body overwhelmed by the power of Tony’s untempered attention.

Finally, though, Tony says, “You almost told him.”

Bruce frowns. “I don’t understand you when you speak in tongues.”

“Miles,” Tony replies, and he rolls his eyes when Bruce’s frown deepens. “You almost told Miles the whole ugly story, start to finish. Actually, for a second, I thought that’s the direction you were headed in, what with the criminal insanity and the family sob story.”

Bruce presses his lips together and glances back out across the living room. “You were listening in.”

“No, I was standing in our living room and heard you and our kid having a heart-to-heart. And since I also tried to bail you out before the going got tough, I think my proximity’s a _good_ thing, not—”

“He’ll have to learn about it eventually,” Bruce quietly interrupts, and Tony falls abruptly silent. Across the room, Jarvis flops down between Miles and Amy’s game boards and starts batting at a few of the little flip-up doors. When he knocks one down, Amy bursts out laughing. “Awful, evil things happen all over the place,” Bruce continues after a few seconds, turning to meet Tony’s eyes. “Parents die in car crashes, uncles disappear, houses burn down and take good people with them. Fathers drink, or abuse their wives, or neglect their sons. It’s—” The words stick in the back of his throat, and he shakes his head. “We can’t protect everyone from everything. Not when we know about all the thorny bits.”

“Or when we lived the thorny bits?” Tony asks quietly.

Bruce forces a smile. “Or that,” he replies, and watches the kids—all three of them—smile and laugh their way through another Sunday night.


	8. Nothing Worth Doing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce receives advice from Natasha he’s not certain he needs. At least, not until Miles reminds him of all the things that should worry him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first scene in this chapter references [Duty of Candor](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1518497), which is also "that story where we find out all about Fury's family life."
> 
> Trigger warning for implied racial slurs and one racist comment (repeated after the initial exchange by the character at whom the comment was directed).
> 
> Thanks as always to my betas, Jen and saranoh, who endured an above-average number of typos this time around.

“Just stop and imagine it for a second, though,” Clint says seriously, and Natasha rolls her eyes as she reaches for their shared spinach-artichoke dip. “The scowl alone’d kill the mood in record time, but come on. The eye patch? The black-on-black-on-black wardrobe? Guy probably sleeps in black boxers on black silk sheets, lost the eye by sliding off the bed or something, and now—”

“Has it ever occurred to that you’re thinking too hard about Fury’s sex life?” Bruce asks.

Clint shrugs. “It’s that or figuring out the physics of when Wade and Nate bump uglies,” he replies, and Bruce isn’t surprised when he and Natasha shudder in unison.

Thanks to the bitterly cold October rain outside, the High Bar is packed nearly wall-to-wall with patrons this Tuesday night; college students on fall break, soccer moms with mojitos, and sports fans jam into booths and cluster around tables, fighting to be heard over the din. A group of men in Cardinals t-shirts shout at the television as their team faces the Dodgers in some important series of games (Bruce never followed baseball, but Steve loves the Dodgers with a single-minded devotion), and the women at the table behind them roll their eyes at every cheer and groan. Bruce can’t determine whether they’re actual or aspirational girlfriends, but either way, he offers them sympathetic smiles as they walk past on their way to the bathroom.

He’s watched enough television shows about battling robots to know the feeling.

Over the last week, he’s battled with dozens of emotions, some of them good and some of them desperately ugly. The news of Fury’s “secret double life” as a husband and father and the subsequent media feeding frenzy’d distracted Tony for days, dragging him into closed-door meetings and leading Bruce to receive a very terse e-mail from one Christine Everhart. He’d printed it out for posterity, and Tony—completely unfazed, just as Bruce’d expected—had hung it in the break room.

“I don’t think you should be so proud of being a menace to society,” Bruce’d observed, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 

Tony, who’d stepped back to admire his handiwork (including a giant arrow made out of blue push-pins), had smirked. “I’m more proud of the fact that she thinks the guy I married is oblivious to my menacing ways,” he’d replied.

He’d stolen three big gulps of Bruce’s coffee before wandering away.

Fury’d shredded the e-mail and left the strips on Tony’s desk.

But then Tony’d spent the end of the previous week in Washington County for oral argument and the better part of the weekend working at the office with Phil, disintegrating slowly into a secretive, skulking ghost. When he’d collapsed into bed late Sunday night, glasses falling down his nose and his whole body pliant, Bruce’d raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’ve got this case under control?” he’d asked.

Tony’d waved his glasses at him before dumping them on the bedside table. Scooting closer meant shoving his cheek against Bruce’s thigh and nuzzling into his pajama bottoms. “Case is fine, but Coulson’s bossy.”

“You’ve never listened to Phil before.”

“First time for everything, and don’t call him Phil.” Bruce’d rolled his eyes, his fingers idly carding through Tony’s hair as he set his book on the bedside table, and Tony’d shifted to stare up at him. “Seriously, why is he Phil?”

“Because he’s our friend?” Bruce’d suggested. Tony’d wrinkled his nose at that, and Bruce’d chuckled. “Or because Clint texted me this afternoon asking if we were starting a swinger’s club without him?”

Tony’d snorted and closed his eyes. “I hope you told him that I’m about three hundred times more likely to swing with the Rogers-Barneses than I am with the Barton-Coulsons.”

“I actually told him that we’re not swinging at all, but okay,” Bruce’d replied, and Tony’d tipped his head to kiss Bruce’s palm.

Tony’s home with the kids now, probably working through math problems and first-grade spelling words, and Bruce—

On the one hand, Bruce misses him, but on the other hand, he’s glad to be out of the house, away from Amy’s continual questions about death and Miles’s constant, almost eerie silence.

There’s eerie silence sweeping across the bar, too, as the baseball game switches to commercial. Clint seizes the opportunity to elbow Bruce in the side. “Not to change the subject—”

“ _Please_ change the subject,” Natasha intones as she scoops more dip onto her plate.

Clint pauses just long enough to scratch his nose with his middle finger. “Anyway,” he says once Natasha’s finished rolling her eyes, “the interns cornered me in the hallway the other day and wanted to know if I had any more information about the Pierpont fire. Guess the law school crowd’s turned it into some kinda thought experiment or something.”

“And that’s why I avoid the interns,” Natasha mutters. When Clint snorts hard enough that he starts choking on his beer, she shoots him a dark look. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Barton, I swear—”

He holds up a hand, still coughing, and Bruce hides his own smile behind the rim of his drink. For a moment, he expects Natasha will just kick Clint under the table and be done with it, but instead she waits, her eyes narrowed and her jaw tight. Finally, Clint sets his bottle down. “I’m not saying you _don’t_ avoid them because of their fake intellectual bullshit,” he defends, “but I just think it’s kinda funny how you started dodging them the week after Brassels called Ward the next you—and not before.”

The resounding _thump_ of Natasha smashing her heel into Clint’s ankle leaves Bruce cringing in sympathy—and he cringes again when Clint slams his knee into the underside of the table in his effort to rub his leg. Natasha smirks and sips her wine, but her eyes remain sharp and predatory.

“You know we’ve got a workplace violence policy, right?” Clint asks.

She shrugs. “We’re not at the workplace,” she reminds him, and helps herself to more dip.

Clint rolls his eyes, ready with a retort that will likely result in injury to his _other_ leg, so Bruce raises his glass to placate the both of them. One of the baseball teams scores, and the roar that follows his nearly deafening. He sips his beer as he waits for the high-fiving and chest-bumping to die down, then settles his glass back on the cardboard coaster. “Jessica asked Ororo Munroe the same question at the funeral, and she said they’re still investigating,” he explains with a slight shrug. “Steve said he had a call in to Howlett, but he’s about as good as phones as Tony is with reading an instruction manual. There’s no open case, though, and they haven’t interviewed the kids again, so I don’t know.”

Natasha runs her fingernail along the lip of her wine glass. “They went to the funeral?”

Bruce frowns. “The kids, or the detectives?”

“Either.”

“Jessica took both of the kids, but as far as I know, Ororo’s the only officer who attended.” Natasha nods vaguely, and Bruce leans back against the booth’s vinyl cushion to sigh. “I thought letting them go to the funeral might be a good idea—Jessica thought so, too, at least for Amy—but now Teddy won’t talk about anything related to the Pierponts and Amy won’t stop asking questions about death. Yesterday, she grilled Tony about funerals all through dinner and Miles locked himself in his room afterwards. It—” The words catch in the back of his throat, thick and clumsy, and he drags a hand through his hair. “They need more closure than we can give them,” he finally says, “and part of that involves knowing what’s going on with the investigation.”

“Yeah, but is that really gonna fix anything?” Clint asks. Both Bruce and Natasha glance over at him, and he shrugs noncommittally. “If the fire’s ruled an arson, then it’s got a name, but it’s still two kids who lost everything they knew when their house burned down. Same thing if they never put a label on what happened.” He tips his beer bottle to one side, catching it on two fingers and then balancing it there. “The important part’s not whether you can call it what it is, the important part’s whether you can talk about it. You guys _and_ your kids.”

“Foster kids,” Bruce reminds him.

He snorts. “Yeah, and Kate Bishop’s just my stalker,” he retorts, and Bruce resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Thanks for that, by the way. I love waking up every morning to find out she’s re-Instagrammed that damn picture, just with a new filter and a better caption.”

Natasha freezes, her glass halfway to her lips. “You follow your sixteen-year-old shadow on Instagram?”

“I’d rather follow her than your girlfriend and her eight thousand pictures of _food_ ,” Clint returns. Natasha shakes her head as she finally sips her wine, and Clint points his bottle at her. “It’s twice a day, Nat. I’m pretty sure she’s got a backlog of salads and fancy noodle dishes for the express purpose of making me hungry in the middle of docket.”

She rolls her eyes. “Because Pepper’s major life concern is your stomach.”

“No, but _your_ major life concern’s driving me crazy, and I’m pretty sure your girlfriend makes a good accomplice,” Clint returns, and Bruce is fairly certain that Natasha’s knowing little _smirk_ just proves his point.

They wander out to the parking lot about a half-hour later, the rain now only a dreary gray drizzle as they head to Bruce’s car. With the university closed for fall break, he’d offered to drive, and he laughs as his friends bicker over radio stations on the way to Clint and Phil’s. Clint bitches about Natasha’s favorite Top 40 station even as they pull into his driveway, and he musses up her damp curls as he ducks out of the back seat and into the night.

Natasha huffs a breath. “He’s a child,” she complains as he waves at them from the front stoop.

Bruce smiles. “That’s why you like him,” he reminds her, and her silence speaks volumes.

Instead of heading directly to Natasha’s apartment complex, Bruce takes an extra left-hand turn toward his and Tony’s house to pick up the pile of books that he’d promised to lend Natasha weeks ago and that are still sitting on the table by the front door. They ride in companionable silence, the radio transitioning into a commercial break as the halos of light from street lamps and traffic signals bleed into the car through the windshield. Natasha kicks off her shoes and rests her feet on the dashboard, sprawling comfortably in the passenger’s seat. When Bruce smiles at her at a red light, she smiles back.

“I always saw you as a father,” she admits as they pull onto Bruce’s street, and Bruce nearly jerks the car out of their lane as he twists to glance at her. She rolls her eyes, her curls brushing her shoulders as she tosses her head. “That can’t be a surprise to you. You love kids. You’ve built your whole career around protecting them. Why wouldn’t you be a father?”

He huffs a breath, the sound bitter in the otherwise silent car. “There’s a very long list of reasons for that.”

“Besides your history?” When he frowns at her, his brow furrowing, she shrugs. “I’m still an attorney, Bruce. Arguably, I’m the attorney in our office who’s best at reading people—or at least, best after Clint. Whatever number your family did on you runs deeper than your mother’s death. Trust me, I have enough dead parents to know.”

She swings her feet back down onto the mat as Bruce pulls into his driveway, and the overhead light in the garage glows a sickly yellow as he slides the car into park. He rolls his lips together for a moment after he shuts off the engine, neither of them speaking.

Finally, he glances over at her. “I worried about myself even after I stopped worrying about my family,” he admits quietly. “Without someone to temper me, I think— Well, I’m sure you can guess what kind of parent I’d be without a partner.”

Natasha smiles softly. “I never said I saw you without a partner,” she observes, and slips out of the car without another word.

Bruce stares after her for a second, her windbreaker a slash of red in the mostly dark garage. By the time he locks the car and follows her in, the dogs are already done with her, prancing over to lick at Bruce’s hands and nudge his thighs with their noses. He scratches them behind the ears before wandering into the kitchen, where he finds Miles eating an ice cream sandwich—and a pajama-clad Tony glaring daggers at Natasha.

“Official new rule for girls’ night,” he says, his eyes flicking in Bruce’s direction. “No bringing your strays home and into the inner sanctum.”

Natasha stops unwrapping her own ice cream sandwich—stolen, presumably, from the box on the island—to tip her head at Tony. “I let Pepper keep you,” she reminds him.

“Uh, no, I had Pepper first.”

“And yet I guarantee she likes me more,” Natasha replies smugly, and there’s a predatory edge to the way she bites the corner off the sandwich.

Tony shudders as though he’s imagining Natasha’s teeth on a different part of his body, and at the kitchen nook, Miles snickers. He’s in his pajamas too, just basketball shorts and an oversized t-shirt, but Bruce knows from the way he’s sitting that he’s trying to broaden his shoulders and posture for their visitor. Natasha winks at him, and he shifts awkwardly and whips his head around to stare at the wall.

Tony scowls. “Don’t break our kid.”

“If you haven’t broken him yet, I certainly won’t,” Natasha replies, and leans against the counter as she eats her ice cream.

Bruce rolls his eyes at the two of them and their constant, unnecessary posturing, but then suddenly the dogs are springing up and thundering toward the stairwell. Within seconds, they’re joined by a grinning, messy-haired Amy, her pajama shorts nearly slipping off her skinny hips as she rushes into the kitchen and plasters herself to Bruce’s side. Bruce raises his arm and lets her wrap herself around his waist, her face burrowing into his shirt for a moment before she finally peeks up at him.

“Tony said I could stay up until you got home as long as I read books and left Miles alone,” she explains breathlessly. When Bruce frowns slightly, she mirrors his expression, her nose wrinkling. “I wasn’t being helpful.”

“She was asking me how to do my algebra homework,” Miles offers.

“Which is hilarious, given his record with algebra,” Tony immediately chimes in. Miles scowls and throws his balled up ice cream sandwich wrapper at him, but he just shrugs. “What? Between your study sessions with Teddy and your Skype homework review with _Briana_ . . . ”

He drags the name out like taffy, and Bruce sends him a warning look. When he grins, it warms Bruce’s belly in a way it really _shouldn’t_ , not after a full year together. At Bruce’s side, though, Amy just sighs. “I wanted to learn hard math,” she says, “since I learned counting in kindergarten twice and we never do anything fun in—”

She stops, then, the words cutting off abruptly, and Bruce only realizes she’s staring at Natasha once Natasha smiles and waves. Bruce strokes the back of her head gently and tries to step out of the way, but Amy follows him, her fingers curling in his belt loops as she sticks closer. 

Natasha wipes ice cream from the corner of her mouth before saying, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Amy murmurs, and presses her cheek against Bruce’s shirt.

Bruce chuckles, shaking his head slightly, but Tony beats him to the punch as he leans heavily on the island and flaps a hand—complete with his own ice cream sandwich—in Natasha’s general direction. “Amy, meet Red-the-utterly-terrifying, and yes, that is her full name. Red, meet Amy, the adorable foster daughter of awesomeness.”

Amy frowns. “Her name is—”

“Natasha,” Bruce corrects, and Tony rolls his eyes when he offers his husband another warning glance. “This is our friend Natasha.”

“When he says _our_ —”

“He means that nobody really likes you but don’t want to stop being friends with Dad because of it?” Miles guesses, and the betrayed expression that flickers across Tony’s face is enough to leave both him and Bruce laughing.

Natasha grins, the laughter climbing into her eyes, and leaves her half-finished dessert on the island so she can crouch down to Amy’s level. Amy hangs back for a moment, her fingers still digging into Bruce’s slacks, but she stops hiding behind him. “I work with Bruce and Tony,” Natasha explains quietly as Amy keeps gaping at her, “and Bruce’s told me a lot about you.”

Amy nods slightly, her lips pursing into a tight line. Finally, she flashes Natasha a tiny, shy smile. “I like your hair,” she says, brushing her own hair out of her face. “Mine goes everywhere.”

“My hair used to get everywhere, too,” Natasha assures her.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Natasha replies, and that’s when Amy _actually_ grins.

Natasha splits the last of her ice cream sandwich with Amy, the girl sitting on the edge of the counter and sucking half-melted vanilla off her fingers as Natasha and Miles chat amicably about the horrors of algebra. Tony chimes in occasionally, but he also follows Bruce out of the kitchen when Bruce wanders off to gather up the pile of books.

They almost collide in the hallway, Tony’s fingers slipping into Bruce’s pockets and pulling him close for a split-second longer than necessary. “Everything good?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.

For the first time in the last ten days—the first time since the Pierpont funeral, really—Bruce finds himself smiling. “Perfect,” he promises, and kisses Tony on the corner of the mouth before leading him back into the kitchen.

Teddy emerges from his phone call with Billy in time to meet Natasha, and for a few minutes, Bruce imagines this life as the life he was always meant to have: a spouse who loves him, children who laugh and tease and play together, friends who slot into his life like they’ve always belonged. He hugs Amy goodnight before heading out to the car with Natasha, books under his arm and a smile on his face, and he catches himself humming along with the radio for most of the drive back to Natasha’s complex. At one point, Natasha raises an eyebrow at him; when he shrugs, she shrugs back and returns to watching out the window.

It’s only after he pulls into a parking spot outside her building and reaches into the back seat for the books that Natasha reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. Her fingers are a shock of warmth through his shirt, and for a second, they stare at one another. She rolls her lips together, a moment of worry evident on her face, and Bruce feels himself swallowing without thinking.

“I need you to be careful,” she finally says, her voice quiet and distant. When he blinks at her, she shakes her head. “I don’t know why I’m even saying this, but I need to know that you’ll be careful.”

“Careful with what?” 

“With Amy and Teddy.” His mouth falls open, and as he stares blankly at her, she shakes her head. “You have a husband and a son at home already, Bruce,” she reminds him, “and falling in love with these kids as fast and as hard as you fell for Miles, it— It might not be as easy as you think, right now.”

Bruce wets his lips, his heart sitting so high in his throat that he feels it on the back of his tongue. “I’m not—”

“You are, and that’s okay,” she interrupts, squeezing his arm gently. “I’m not even saying that you shouldn’t. I’m just saying you should go carefully.” She meets his eyes, her gaze steady and soft in the darkness. “For everyone’s sake.”

He glances out the windshield for a moment, watching as the wiper blades sweep away all the tiny pinpricks of rain. “I will,” he promises.

“That’s all I need to know,” she responds, and his arm feels cold when she releases him and ducks out of the car.

 

==

 

“Doctor Banner, we can’t keep meeting like this,” Principal Johnson says, and Bruce rubs his forehead with a hand.

He knows she means it as a joke—her smile’s warm enough, her manner pleasant as she extends a hand in his direction—but honestly, Bruce is too tired to accept her attempt at levity. He shakes her hand awkwardly as he crosses into her office, aware as always at the stacks of paperwork on her desk and the brown, dying fern that lives atop one of the file cabinets. Bruce owns a fern like that, a hasty Hanukah gift from Tony the first winter after they met (during which time Tony’d developed strange assumptions about Bruce’s religion). The fern lives in a sunny corner of their bedroom, now, and Bruce smiles as he thinks about it.

The smile disappears when Principal Johnson closes the door behind her. “Take a seat,” she says, and Bruce remembers why he’s in her office in the first place.

In all honesty, Bruce’d looked forward to a quiet Thursday in his office, picking up the leftover pieces from two very busy days. He’d spent all of Wednesday frantic, rushing through his pre-planned docket to clear time for an emergency custody hearing for two very young, very neglected toddlers. He’d sent dozens of e-mails and texts between cases and during lunch, trying to coordinate translators for the parents, attorneys for all the parties, and scheduling the social workers and police officers involved. By four-thirty, he’d cleared everyone’s schedules enough to actually hold the hearing; at _six_ -thirty, he’d stumbled through their front door exhausted.

“Tea, beer, or butter pecan ice cream?” Tony’d asked, hovering just outside the foyer.

Bruce’d rolled his lips together. “The last two,” he’d answered, and topped off his healthy dinner with a huge helping of—

“You made a casserole?” he’d asked, frowning at the baking dish in the fridge.

“In my defense, you left me to cook for three children.” Tony’d pressed up against his back, a warm, welcome weight. “Found the recipe online. It’s, like, tuna and rice and cheese. Big hit, even Miles ate it.”

“I’m not picky,” Miles’d complained from the couch.

“You are when I cook,” Tony’d reminded him.

Bruce’d brought the rest of the casserole for his Thursday lunch.

His lunch waits for him back at the office as he lowers himself into the chair across from Johnson’s desk, aware of her stare even before he glances at her. Tony’s trapped in back-to-back teleconferences with the assistant appellate court clerk—something about a change in appellate procedure, as Bruce understood it—and Bruce is here, forcing a smile at Miles’s principal as she folds her hands atop her desk. Nearby, there’s a manila folder that boasts Miles’s name.

Bruce swallows.

“Ms. Johnson—”

She raises a hand and shakes her head slightly. “I know we got off on the wrong foot last time,” she says, and Bruce rolls his lips together. “That’s my fault. I know I offended both you and Mr. Stark, and that was never my intention. These meetings are hard enough without a clumsy administrator sticking her foot in her mouth.” She smiles softly. “I owe you an apology.”

Bruce’s mouth twitches, never quite curling into an actual smile, and for a moment, he considers playing ignorant. To grin and nod like a casual, clueless parent anxious to return to work. The way Johnson raises her eyebrows, he thinks she wants the same.

Instead, he says, “You didn’t just ask me here to apologize.”

The principal’s smile immediately fades. “No,” she admits, “I didn’t. Are you familiar with a young man in Miles’s class named Judge Montgomery?”

Bruce nods. “He and Miles were friends when Miles first came into my custody. I think they’ve drifted apart some over the last year.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Johnson replies. There’s something in her tone—not combativeness as much as tension—that immediately puts Bruce’s nerves on edge. He leans forward slightly, his palms rubbing against his slacks. “In social studies this morning, Miles and Judge started arguing. The teacher shut it down, but it apparently came up again in math and science.”

“And?” Bruce asks.

Johnson’s lips crease into a tight frown. “There were some racially charged terms exchanged,” she explains, “and the argument only ended when Miles knocked Judge’s lab stool out from under him.”

As much as he tries to stand on his surprise, Bruce’s mouth falls open. For a moment, he’s absolutely speechless, his eyes wide and his mind racing as he stares at the woman across the desk from him. After a year together, he’s certainly seen Miles at his worst—angry enough that he cries, frustrated enough to fling pillows or shove one of the dogs, so overwhelmed by the experience of being thirteen that a snide comment morphs into a shout—but pushing a friend off his lab stool, that’s an entirely different kind of outburst. He drags fingers through his hair and over his face, unsure how to fill the silence.

His heart feels like it might sink into his stomach. His stomach itself feels like a stone.

At her desk, Johnson sighs. “Judge will be suspended for the rest of the week, given that we have a zero tolerance policy for that kind of language. Miles—” She pauses to shake her head. “We’d like him out until Monday as well. Their teacher thinks that Judge was trying to provoke the altercation—there were words exchanged about both Miles’s mother and his new foster sister—but with the way Miles keeps escalating these arguments—”

“Is Judge okay?” Bruce hears himself ask. He blinks at the urgency of it, the way he blurts out the question; when Johnson frowns, he shakes his head. “I know what’s happening with Miles is serious, I know we need to talk to him, that his therapist needs to talk to him, I just—”

He shakes his head again, a useless attempt to clear the cobwebs, and Johnson forces a tight smile. “Aside from a severely bruised ego, Judge is fine,” she assures him, but he hears the tension in her voice again. “Dr. Banner, if there are resources you need help finding, or other concerns you can’t voice around your husband—”

Bruce snorts and barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. “If you’re about to suggest Tony is the problem—”

“I’m suggesting that raising a teenager is hard for anyone, no matter how much they love him,” Johnson cuts in. Bruce huffs out a breath and rubs a hand over his face. “There’s a lot you’re still learning about being parents to your son—and a lot that your son’s learning about being part of your family. It’s okay to be at a loose end.”

He tries not to think of all the loose ends in their life: Teddy and Amy, the Pierpont fire, their work schedules, the stress of social lives and appointments. He pictures it not as a loosely-twined rope unraveling, but as grains of sand slipping through his fingers. He pushes the thought away and forces a tiny smile. “I’ll let you know if we need anything,” he says. His own voice sounds distant.

“Are you sure—”

“I’m sure,” Bruce cuts in. She looks ready to protest as he rises to his feet, and a second time as he shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’d like to see my son.”

“He’s waiting with his English teacher,” Johnson replies, and stands to lead him out the door.

Miles practically vaults out of his desk when Bruce and the principal walk into the room, the color draining from his face so quickly that Bruce half expects him to faint. He cranes his neck for a second, staring out into the hallway until the door swings shut.

“No Tony?” he asks, his voice nearly a croak.

Bruce rolls his lips together. “No Tony,” he answers, and Miles’s whole face falls.

They walk down the hallway side by side, Miles staring at his sneakers as Bruce listens to their footfalls squeak along the tile floor. He tries to formulate the thousand questions that rattle around in his head—about Judge and his racial slurs, about lab stools, about spikes of anger—but they all disintegrate before ever reaching his lips. He thanks Principal Johnson before they head out the front doors and out into the cool fall day.

Halfway to the car, Miles wets his lips. “For the record, Judge started it, and I—”

Bruce shakes his head. “We can talk about it later.”

The thin thread of anger in his tone—tight and red-hot, overriding even the disappointment that lives deep in his belly—surprises him, and at his side, Miles freezes. He shifts his backpack higher up on his shoulder, his whole body tensing. “Bruce—”

“Later,” Bruce repeats, harsher than before, and forces himself to keep walking. The bubbling, ugly pit of anger that’s brewing in his stomach threatens to boil over, and he forces himself to swallow around it as he fishes his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the Prius.

“Bruce,” Miles says again, ten or fifteen steps behind.

“Get in the car, Miles.”

“But you have to listen to me, Judge said—”

“Do you think I care about that right now?” Bruce’s voice echoes across the parking lot, booming like a thunderclap, and he whirls on his heel to stare at his son. In his baggy t-shirt and favorite jeans, he looks small, a scrawny boy in a young man’s clothing. He flinches when Bruce throws up his hands. “I don’t care what Judge said to you, just like I don’t care what Ty or the boy before Ty said to you. I care about how _you_ respond to it, and about how you continue to think that starting a physical altercation is the only way to deal with the problem!” Miles immediately drops his eyes to the pavement, and Bruce— As much as Bruce tries not to, he finds himself running his hands through his hair before he drops them helplessly to his sides. “You won’t talk to us, you won’t talk to your therapist, you won’t talk to any of the other adults we throw at you on a regular basis. And as much as we beg and plead, you still think that getting into a fight is the better answer.”

Ten or fifteen feet away, Miles swallows thickly. When his shoulders shudder, Bruce’s chest tightens. “He said my rich parents wanted to fill their house with Hispanic kids to do the laundry,” he murmurs, and for the first time, Bruce feels his anger spike a whole different direction. “He called me and Amy—”

“People are always going to find something to call you,” Bruce breaks in when Miles’s voice starts to tremble. He crosses the distance between them, his hands and shoulders slowly unclenching. “They’ll cut you down because of your race, or because you’re smart, or because your parents are two men.” Miles draws in a shaky breath, still not looking up; when Bruce puts a hand on his arm, he flinches, but he doesn’t jerk away. “It doesn’t matter what people say to you to make you feel small, but it matters how you respond to it.”

Miles snorts. “Easy for you to say,” he mutters.

“Very few things came easy for me at your age,” Bruce replies, and he squeezes his arm before leading him to the car. They drive to the judicial complex in absolute silence—no conversation, no radio, nothing but the wind through the cracked windows and the hum of the engine—and Bruce pretends not to notice the number of times Miles wipes his face on the back of his hand. He trudges obediently along behind Bruce when they arrive at the building, too, and when Rhodey answers the door to his office, he ducks under the head of security’s arm and immediately throws himself into one of the spare chairs.

Rhodey raises an eyebrow. “Do I wanna know?” When Bruce rolls his lips together instead of actually answering, Rhodey sighs. He glances over at Miles for a minute—the boy’s already tucked himself up into the tightest ball possible, his head lolling against the wall as he studies the duct work of the unfinished ceiling—before he shakes his head. “Given that I’ve been there,” he finally says, “I’ll take care of it.”

Bruce frowns. “You’ve been in schoolyard fights?” he asks.

Rhodey grins. “No, but I’ve been thirteen, black, and pissed off at the world,” he answers, and he pats Bruce on the arm before sending him back upstairs to his own office.

Bruce returns the favor by sending the last of the casserole down to Miles as a lunch—and, he supposes, as a peace offering.

He works through the lunch hour and into the afternoon, sorting through piles of case files and reports and trying desperately to focus on work and not the teenager who sits seven floors under him, listening to NPR and (presumably) working on homework. But despite his best efforts, Bruce finds his mind wandering, tripping over itself as he stops reviewing documents for his cases and starts reviewing the conversation in the parking lot—and then, every other conversation he’s shared with his son. The terrified twelve-year-old from last October feels like a distant memory; now, instead, Bruce finds himself staring down the gauntlet at an angry, resentful teenager who won’t open up.

He’s still scared, Bruce knows. He can read it in Miles’s face, in his posture, in the way he avoids eye contact and skulks around the house. Bruce just isn’t sure how to crack through his shell and curl his fingers around the fear.

Worse, Bruce can’t decide whether Teddy and Amy’s presence in their house is helping or hurting the situation.

It’s just after he stands up to stretch at around three p.m. that Tony materializes in his doorway. “Need you,” he says, and ducks away just as quickly as he appeared.

Bruce blinks exactly once, his hand still planted on his lower back. “Need me for what?” he calls after the other man.

Even with Tony halfway down the hallway, he can _hear_ his husband’s long suffering sigh—and worse, imagine the accompanying eye-roll. When he reappears in the doorway, his face is the very picture of exasperation. “I just _need_ you,” he explains.

Bruce rubs a hand over his face. “After the conversations I’ve had with Principal Johnson and with Miles, I am not in the mood for—”

“When I need you for sex, I tell you I need you for sex—though I appreciate knowing that not even this fine specimen is enough to get you going right now, really stokes my self-esteem.” He gestures to his own body—including his wrinkled shirt, rolled-up sleeves, and mussed hair—and Bruce rolls his lips together to keep from smirking. “I need you for something else. Which I could tell you about, but I’d rather show you. Keep some surprise in the relationship.”

“Last time you said that, you bought chocolate body paint,” Bruce reminds him.

“And you loved it,” Tony retorts, and disappears back down the hall before Bruce can roll his eyes. 

The district attorney’s office as a whole is busy but not crowded, full of ringing phones and noisy copiers, and Bruce smiles as he slides past Darcy on his way to Tony’s office. He nods as he passes Thor and Jane—the latter weighed down with a half-dozen case files—and almost collides with one of the file clerks before he steps into Tony’s office and comes face-to-face with—

“Kate dropped me off,” Teddy says, holding up both hands. He’s leaning against the window ledge, his backpack still slung over one shoulder and his windbreaker open. His hair’s messy and windswept, like he just walked in from outside. “I was going to call you guys first, but I figured if I was coming straight here, it’d make more sense if I just—”

“Is everything okay?” Bruce interrupts, finally shaking off his surprise. Tony, already flopped back in his desk chair, rolls his eyes. Bruce grits his teeth to keep from glaring, but then he’s checking Teddy over, looking for any signs of—well, of anything _wrong_. “If you needed us, you could have called instead of—”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Teddy cuts him off, frowning. He glances at Tony for a brief second, and he watches the other man shrug before he rolls his lips together. “Miles texted me.”

“Miles?” Bruce repeats.

“You remember Miles, don’t you? Tall, skinny, currently in security office purgatory and still armed with his cell phone?” Tony leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. “Which actually brings me to my first question about today’s father-son adventures: why _does_ our mildly suspended teenager still have his cell phone?”

“An issue I would’ve probably addressed if he and I’d been talking at that point,” Bruce retorts. His voice is sharper than he means it to be, and immediately, Tony’s half-amused expression falters. He sighs and shakes his head before turning back to Teddy. “Did Miles say anything to you besides the fact that he’s in with Rhodey for the afternoon?” 

“Uh, I don’t know who Rhodey is, so probably not?” Teddy replies with a shrug. “He told me he got kicked out of school for the day and wanted to know if I could pick him up and take him back to the house on the bus.” Tony’s jaw tightens, and Teddy quickly raises his hands. “With your permission. He wanted me to get your permission, too.”

Tony’s eyes flick over in Bruce’s direction. “They’re colluding. A couple weeks in, and the two of them are already colluding, waging war against the adults in their household with no respect for their elders.”

“You’re the one who was desperate for more foster children,” Bruce reminds him, but he can’t help a tiny smile, either.

Tony smiles too, a little of the lost amusement finding his laugh lines again. At the window, however, Teddy shifts his weight conspicuously. “I don’t totally know what happened,” he says, playing with the strap of his backpack, “but I can always just go to the library. Kate’s at work, but one of the busses runs right past there, so—”

“What happened at Castle Rock Middle School usually stays at Castle Rock Middle School, but if you can talk some sense into the wayward youth who lives in our house and eats our food, by all means.” Bruce rolls his lips together, unwilling to argue—after all, the last thing Teddy needs is to witness their bickering—but Tony draws him out of his own head by snapping at him. He frowns, confused, and Tony sighs. “Keys.”

“To?”

“To that horrible celery-colored eyesore you call a car.”

“I— What?”

Bruce asks the question at the same time and with the same inflection as Teddy. The teen’s brow furrows as Tony huffs and rolls his eyes. “I know that you’re very concerned about global climate change—I mean, I think you might be the only person on the planet who keeps a copy of _An Inconvenient Truth_ on his iPad—but I’m not sending two teenage boys home on public transportation. They’ll catch tuberculosis. Or meet girls.”

“You remember I don’t like girls, right?” Teddy asks.

“Then your very sexuality is at stake, and that is simply not a risk I am willing to make you take.” Teddy grins even as he rolls his eyes, and for the first time all afternoon, Bruce snorts a laugh as he shakes his head. “So, big guy: keys, please.”

“Uh, not to burst your bubble,” Teddy volunteers from the window ledge, raising his hand like he’s in class, “but there’s one more flaw in your plan.”

Tony dismisses him with a lazy hand-wave. “No flaws, my plan is perfect.”

“Yeah, except I can’t drive.” Tony spins around on his chair fast enough that Bruce almost expects him to fall off it. A bright red flush climbs Teddy’s neck, and he tries to rub it away with his hand. “Ed took me driving occasionally, but I mean, I literally just turned sixteen. While sitting on your couch. I don’t have a license. I don’t really think you’d _want_ me to have one, I’m so bad at it.” Tony blinks, his brown eyes wide in shock, and Teddy swallows audibly. “Should I be apologizing or something?”

“You don’t have a license,” Tony repeats. He strings the words together so slowly, Bruce wonders if he’s had a minor stroke.

Teddy nods. “Yeah.”

“You’re a red-blooded American sixteen-year-old with gal-pals in short-shorts and a boyfriend, and you’re not chomping at the bit to get behind the wheel and take our Prius god-knows where for hours on end?”

Teddy glances at Bruce, who shrugs. “No?” he answers.

Tony groans—loudly—and thumps his head back against his chair. Twice, actually, the second time hard enough that Bruce thinks he feels his own teeth rattle. “I officially don’t understand kids these days. I don’t even care if that dates me: I don’t get them at all.”

A strangled, half-contained laugh bursts out of Teddy, and his effort to hide the sound behind his hand just transforms it into a pained snicker. Bruce rolls his eyes, a smile pushing at the corners of his mouth as he shakes his head. “What Tony means is that we’ll take you out for some driving lessons this weekend,” he says. When Tony opens his mouth to correct him, he raises his hand. “If you and Miles want to go home on the bus, that’s fine. We’ll give you the fare. It might be good for him to talk to someone who isn’t his parent.”

“Despite the fact he has truly excellent parents,” Tony chimes in.

Bruce smiles. “Despite that, yes,” he replies, and nods toward the door.

Tony stays behind in his office as Bruce leads Teddy downstairs, muttering something about cover sheets and signatures as they wander out of the office. The elevator ride down to the basement is quiet, Teddy with his hands in his pockets and Bruce staring at the ever-changing floor number; in the cinderblock-and-tile basement hallway, their footfalls echo ominously. It’s as they pass the IT department, complete with Skye Carson’s handwritten _Knock loudly—I’m wearing headphones!_ sign, that Teddy says, “I wasn’t always a model student, either.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow, more in surprise than anything else, and the teen shrugs. “After my mom died— I lost my dad when I was really little, and so I don’t think I understood how it all worked. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t, and that was the end of that.” He adjusts his backpack before glancing over at Bruce. “With my mom, I hated everything. All the questions, the sad looks, everybody worrying about me all the time . . . ” He trails off with a shake of his head. “I lashed out.”

“And you grew out of it,” Bruce replies.

Teddy snorts. “If I’d grown all the way out of it, I wouldn’t still be in foster care,” he retorts, and Bruce rolls his lips together. “Miles is an awesome kid. If we were the same age, I’d probably hang out with him voluntarily. But it’s really hard to have all that going through your head.” He stops just long enough to catch Bruce’s eyes. “No matter how great your parents are.”

Bruce runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m not sure Tony and I are helping the situation,” he admits.

“You’re too good at this to _hurt_ it,” Teddy returns, and keeps walking.

Once the boys are waiting at the bus stop, armed with enough money for fare and a soda—“Don’t tell Tony,” Bruce warns Miles, and he grins for what feels like the first time all day—Bruce trudges back into the office. He stops at the break room long enough to pour himself a cup of coffee and steal one of Pepper’s yogurts (he leaves an apologetic note in hopes that she won’t blame Natasha) before heading back to his office. 

He’s not exactly surprised to find Tony standing at the window, picking dead leaves off of one of his plants. He’s slouch-shouldered and comfortable, the tiny flecks of gray in his hair illuminated by the light from the window, and for a moment, Bruce just wants to press up against him and forget all of the day’s frustrations.

Instead, he pulls the door shut behind him. “If you’re here to accuse me about mismanaging today’s school situation, at least let me drink half this cup of coffee and—”

“Can I guess what happened? Because I got the e-mail you sent right after Johnson called, and ever since then, I’ve been formulating my guess.” Tony plucks off one last leaf before he turns around, his hands immediately falling into his pockets. “Because I’m pretty sure somebody—probably another kid—said something to upset _our_ kid, and our kid, proving once again to be the epitome of reason and restraint, decided to start some kind of physical altercation.” He leans his weight against the window, his posture mirroring Teddy’s from all of ten minutes ago. “Am I anywhere in the ballpark?”

Bruce sighs as he sets down his coffee mug. “Judge.”

“Which judge?”

“No, I mean—the kid who said something to Miles was his friend Judge.” Tony frowns, and Bruce just shakes his head at him. “I don’t know all the details, but I guess he made some racially based comments about Miles’s heritage.” He pauses when a flash of anger flickers across Tony’s face. “And when that wasn’t enough, he added Amy into the equation.”

Immediately, all of Tony’s easy casualness evaporates, his whole body bristling. His shoulders tighten, his jaw sets, and when he crosses his arms over his chest, it shows off the full effect of his forearms. Bruce feels his heart start to race, even though he knows without thinking that the frustration’s not aimed in his direction. 

Finally, Tony wets his lips. “Can I string a seventh-grader up by his toes and leave him there to dangle?” he asks, voice tight.

Bruce sighs. “No, Tony.”

“Can I think about doing it? Because right now, knowing that there’s a kid who thinks cracks about Hispanics—including not only my kid but also tiny curly-haired girls who’ve never done a _thing_ to him—are okay, I really want to—”

“ _Tony._ ” 

The hard edge to Bruce’s voice causes Tony’s mouth to snap shut, but he keeps his body tense, every inch of him waiting for a fight. Bruce rubs a hand over his forehead and then his face, trying to smooth out the worry lines his day has caused. Eventually, he sighs and shakes his head. “I’m not happy about the exchange, either,” he admits, “but the bigger problem is that we have a thirteen-year-old who’d rather kick his classmate off a lab stool than stop and have a rational conversation. Never mind talking to us.” He drops his eyes to the corner of his desk. “Never mind talking to _anyone_ ,” he amends, and his tone sounds quieter now, and sticky.

He swallows around the lump that rises in his throat, but before he reassembles himself enough to raise his head again, Tony’s _there_ , a hand running down Bruce’s arm . Bruce sighs as some of the tension slowly uncoils. “He’s fine until he’s not, Tony,” he says quietly.

“Pretty sure that’s the way with teenagers.” When Bruce jerks his head up, Tony offers him only a tiny, forced smile and a shake of his head. “I don’t like it any more than you do, and I definitely don’t have the answer,” he says, his palm strong and warm on Bruce’s upper arm. “What I do know is that you and I, we’re doing the best we know how to do. Not because we had great role models, because god knows that’s not true, but because we learn from our mistakes and we keep trying to figure it out.”

“And if we can’t help him?” Bruce asks. Tony sighs, his lips already opening to protest, and Bruce raises a hand. “I know there’s no magic balm for this, no quick fix we can pull out and use on him so he’ll feel better about life,” he explains. “But if he keeps regressing, and this keeps getting _worse_ —”

“Then we cross that bridge when we come to it,” Tony cuts in. Bruce rolls his eyes and reaches for his coffee cup, but Tony catches his wrist. “Hey,” he says, and there’s just enough force behind it that Bruce lifts his head to meet those open brown eyes. “I’m not exactly a parenting expert, but I’m a ‘baggage as far as the eye can see’ expert. And whatever happens next with our kid, we’ll deal with it. Hell or high water, it doesn’t matter, because he’s our kid and we’re in it for the long haul.”

Something deep in Bruce’s stomach—this terrified, unnamed _knot_ of emotion that he’s spent the last several weeks fighting against—starts to unwind. When he finally releases a breath, it sounds more like a sigh than a frustrated little huff. “It might not be easy,” he says quietly.

“Nothing worth doing’s ever easy,” Tony replies, “but guess what? We do it anyway.”

 

==

 

“Okay, well, you’re _kind_ of close,” Miles says gently, and Amy groans as she leans her forehead against the kitchen table. “No, come on, you can do it. You got everything right except the ‘e.’”

Amy’s head immediately snaps up, and for a moment, her scowl’s so severe that Bruce almost intervenes. “It’s an _er_ word,” she says snottily, her nose wrinkling. “When we were reading, my teacher said that ‘e’ plus ‘r’ made _er_.” When she drags out the _r_ until it’s almost a growl, Miles snorts and hides his mouth behind his hand. “It’s not funny.”

“No, you’re right, it’s not,” Miles replies. He holds up both his hands, red pen and all, but Amy keeps glaring. “But ‘word’ is kind of funny, because it sounds like _er_ but there’s no ‘e.’ And if you don’t believe me, ask my dad.”

Bruce barely manages to drop his eyes back down to his iPad before Amy’s staring at him with enough force to bore a hole into his head. When he glances up, he raises his eyebrows as though he’s not spent the last ten minutes eavesdropping. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

Amy’s face twists into a scowl that only deepens when Miles bursts out laughing.

Bruce, for his part, smiles.

Deep down, Bruce knows that Miles should be upstairs in his room, stripped of all electronic devices and left to think about his own poor decisions, but it feels wrong somehow to deprive him of these few ridiculous moments with a wound-up first-grader and her spelling words. Of the eight, Amy’s conquered about half—she’s preternaturally good at rhyming, and several words end in –ick—but despite her test in the morning, this week’s sight words still baffle her. She’s misspelled words like _not_ and _but_ in a variety of creative ways, and now, she’s convinced there’s an ‘e’ in _word_. The very picture of patience, Miles’s returned her paper to her a half-dozen times now, always encouraging her try something new, but now, it’s almost bedtime and she’s still struggling.

Miles’s own homework, on the other hand, sits forgotten.

Bruce and Tony’d traded keys after school, Tony picking up Amy while Bruce drove the Audi home (at a reasonable speed, thank you), and he’d walked in the door to find Teddy and Miles sitting at the coffee table in the living room, talking and playing the world’s least-contentious game of Scrabble. “I know you think you’ve got it under control,” Teddy’d said as Bruce’d walked in, oblivious to his presence, “but girls are complicated. Sometimes, you just have to tell them things to their face before they get it.”

“Says the gay guy,” Miles’d retorted, digging into the tile bag.

“I might be gay, but I still know more girls than you do,” Teddy’d returned, and as far as Bruce had been able to tell, Miles’d choked on air at the perfect comeback. Teddy, smiling placidly, had rearranged a few tiles on his tray. “And trust me on this, okay? I’ve watched Kate and Eli dance around each other for six months, and all because Eli won’t suck it up and tell her he’s got a thing.”

“Like David has a thing for you?” Miles’d asked.

Teddy’d rolled his eyes. “You sound like Billy.”

“He kept touching your leg at your birthday party.” After a year of living with Miles, Bruce’d learned to spot his _smug_ tone a mile away. He’d smiled to himself as he’d dumped his keys on the kitchen counter. “I mean, you keep telling me I don’t know what I’m doing with Briana, but if David molesting your leg means he _doesn’t_ have a thing, then—”

“You’re short a tile,” Teddy’d grumbled, and Miles’d laughed hard enough that the dogs had both run over to check on him.

For the most part, Miles’d spent most of the evening leaving both Tony and Bruce a wide berth, but he’d clung to his two foster siblings like lifelines; after Scrabble, he’d played some inane Kinect game with Amy, reviewed math problems with Teddy, and sat on the deck with both of them, eating ice cream sandwiches despite the creeping October cold. Bruce’d studied him the whole time, ignoring Tony’s constant stream of jokes to memorize fleeting smiles and warm laughter. Whatever fear or anger lived in Miles’s heart had fled long enough for him to fill Amy’s bath (with some supervision) and now, to review spelling words.

And to watch Bruce, his eyes dancing, while Bruce shakes his head. “No ‘e,’” he tells Amy.

Amy releases a half-whine, half-moan and crumples onto the breakfast nook’s bench, her face hidden by her arm as she curls into a moody, defeated ball. Miles reaches across the table and pokes her in the side with the eraser end of her pencil. “Come on,” he goads as the girl smacks his hand away. “You’re _so_ close. One letter off.” Amy grumbles some rough approximation of a response into her elbow, and the teen grins. “You know what? I bet you can’t get it right.”

“Can too!” Amy argues, immediately shooting back up into a sitting position. Miles raises both his eyebrows, his entire face an unspoken challenge, and the girl snatches her sheet of spelling words away from him. “I can spell _all_ my words right.”

“Then prove it,” Miles challenges, and Amy wrinkles her nose at him as she yanks her pencil out of his hand and starts writing.

Once Tony and Teddy return from walking the dogs—Tony laughing about something while Teddy blushes a bright, almost neon shade of red—they coax a triumphant Amy upstairs and into bed. Jarvis mews in protest as he’s evicted from her pillow, curling up at her feet and glaring at the interlopers that interrupted _his_ night in _his_ room. “And then,” Amy tells Tony, her smile as bright as the day, “I spelled the last word right.”

“You know, as much as the big guy had his doubts, I never _once_ thought you couldn’t.” Bruce elbows Tony slightly, his eyes narrowing, and Tony holds up both his hands. “I’m joking, and she knows I’m joking. I mean, she spelled all the words right, so she’s obviously a genius.”

Amy giggles when Tony tweaks her nose, but her face transforms into something softer when he brushes the hair out of her eyes. Bruce is hardly surprised when she reaches up for a fierce, white-knuckled goodnight hug—or when she demands the same thing from Bruce himself.

He’s breathing in the scent of no-tangle shampoo and bubblegum toothpaste when Amy murmurs, “Don’t be mad at Miles.” He pulls back a few inches, frowning, and she worries her lips together. “He said he was bad today, and that you and Tony are both mad at him,” she explains, her arms still looped around his neck. “Everybody’s bad, sometimes.”

Bruce smiles at her and shakes his head slightly. “Not you, I’m sure,” he teases.

She grins. “Sometimes,” she replies lightly, and squeezes him again before she finally settles into bed.

In the hallway, Tony snakes his hand under the back of Bruce’s shirt before saying, “Sounds like he’s not a total lost cause, this time around.”

“Not as much as he’s just plain lost,” Bruce replies, and leans into his grip.

An hour-and-a-half later, the house is quiet and dark as Bruce raps to knuckles on Miles’s bedroom door before carefully letting himself in. Miles sprawls on his bed sideways, his face tilted up toward the ceiling as he studies the pinprick silver stars above him. There’s an upside-down library book next to him, along with two comics and a spiral notebook, but he ignores all his distractions.

For a moment, Bruce just stands in the doorway, wondering how his sarcastic, thoughtful son could look so grown-up and so lost all at once. Eventually, though, he swallows. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it,” he says gently, his hands falling into his pockets, “and I can’t force you. I don’t _want_ to force you, not until you’re ready. But you need to understand that pushing people around, even when they hurt you, isn’t—”

“I didn’t care until he said it about Amy.” Miles’s voice is soft but strong, so firm and _certain_ that the rest of Bruce’s sentence dies in the back of his throat. He rolls his head against the bedspread, his face young and scared as he meets Bruce’s eyes. “I didn’t even want to tell Judge about her and Teddy—he’s so _weird_ lately, like he thinks I think I’m too good for him or something—but Ganke made it this whole thing, and then—” He shakes his head before he looks back up at the ceiling. “People say shitty things to me about being adopted by you guys all the time, but Amy’s just a little girl.”

Bruce swears he hears his pulse everywhere—in his ears, in his temples, and yes, in his chest—and drawing in a breath does nothing to quiet it. “If people are saying things to you like that, Miles, we can—”

“Can we just hang out for a couple minutes?” Miles interrupts. When he glances back in Bruce’s direction, Bruce can see all the fear and helplessness that’s hiding behind his teenage bluster. “We can talk about stars, or books, or anything, I just— Can we please just _hang_?”

Despite everything else in their life—fights and fires and teenage angst included—Bruce can’t help but offer his son a tiny, warm smile. “Sure,” he says, and the grin Miles flashes him in response is absolutely blinding.

In the end, they boot up a documentary about space on the iPad, Bruce balancing it on his thigh as they learn about the galaxy.

And when Bruce wakes up at midnight, it’s to a dark iPad in a darker room with his son—his lost, terrified, brilliant son—comfortably asleep on his shoulder.


	9. Conversations and Interrogations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce discusses the Pierpont case with Jessica Jones and _life_ with just about everyone else. None of these conversations are particularly reassuring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features brief references to homophobia.
> 
> Thanks as always to my betas, Jen and saranoh, who yell at fictional characters when it is deserved (and sometimes, when it is not).

“She’d had better and worse visits with her mom, but that’s not what I’m here about,” Jessica Jones says Saturday night, and she adds a second splash of whisky to her Irish coffee. 

Tony, Teddy, and Miles are all perched on the very edge of the couch, Wiimotes clutched desperately in their hands as they engage in the ugliest three-way MarioKart battle in the history of the sport. Amy sits cross-legged on one of the overstuffed chairs and cheers for whoever’s in first; when she jostles the chair too much, Jarvis meows loudly and paws at her shoulder. The whole display’s so comfortable and familial that Bruce’s stomach twists.

“Then what is it?” he asks Jessica when he finally tears his eyes away from Tony and the kids. Jessica’s leaning against the island, slouched and comfortable in her jeans and a soft sweater. She raises her eyebrows as she sips her coffee, and Bruce rolls his eyes. “You’re here at eight o’clock on a Saturday night. Worse, you’re cagey and drinking our whisky.” She snorts, almost smiling. “Something’s obviously wrong with one of them.”

“Not one of them,” she corrects. She sets down her mug with finality before she meets his eyes. “The investigation into the Pierpont fire’s a whole other story.”

Something tight and frightened rises in the back of Bruce’s throat, and he nods weakly as he glances back into the living room. The MarioKart battle’d actually started that morning before Miles and Tony’d embarked on “Dad Time” and Amy’d left to visit her mother at her live-in rehabilitation facility; Bruce still clearly remembers the eye-rolls and complaining as he’d shooed all three children away from the television. “You’re making me go to Costco instead of playing with Teddy,” Miles’d whined, slumping on the couch.

“No,” Tony’d responded, poking him lightly in the chest, “we’re offering you the rare and wonderful privilege of spending a day with one of your fathers. Now, go get dressed.”

“But—”

“Go,” Tony’d repeated, and shoved him until he’d dramatically rolled off the couch. 

Now, the drama involves Teddy’s supposedly illicit use of a shortcut in the mall level and Miles’s prowess with red shells.

Bruce tries to hold onto his smile for as long as he can, but finally, he turns back to Jessica. “How bad?”

She drops her eyes to the floor and reaches for her coffee mug. “Pretty bad.”

“And how bad is that?”

“Given that you’re a member of the district attorney’s office, I don’t know how much I can—”

“Jessica.” His voice is sharper and tighter than he intends, and Dummy picks his head up from where he’s sprawled on the kitchen tile. Bruce sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “We’ve had the conflict-of-interest talk with our boss,” he assures her, but she just rolls her lips together. “And you know neither of us will ever touch this case.”

“Unless there’s a conviction and appeal,” Jessica points out.

“Tony’ll have it conflicted out to Steve or Clint,” Bruce retorts. She frowns at that, her brow furrowing, and sips her coffee. Uncertainty and worry flicker across her expression, and Bruce grips his own mug harder. “You came all this way,” he reminds her.

“And I shouldn’t spill the beans,” she returns. She leans her head back until it lightly thumps against the upper cabinet. “Every time I try staffing this case with another social worker, they turn squirrelly,” she says after a few seconds. “The fire itself is uncharted territory, and our turnover rate’s so high that most of them are babies themselves. They’ve never spent five, six years with a kid. They’ve never dealt with the level of counselling and school interventions that I’ve dragged Amy through.” She shoves a few loose strands of hair behind her ear before she meets Bruce’s eyes. “I need somebody who gets it more than I need to spill the beans.”

“You talk to Kurt Wagner some, don’t you?” he asks. She snorts and rolls her eyes. “What?”

“Kurt’s tangentially related to the problem, so he’s not really my number one ally right now.”

He frowns. “How’s Kurt part of—”

“Because Howlett paid me a ‘courtesy visit’ on Thursday,” she cuts in, her jaw and shoulders tightening, “and he requested Amy and Teddy’s full social work history.”

In the living room, someone wins the final race of the cup, and for a few seconds, the quiet in the kitchen is overtaken by raucous cheering and laughter. By the time Bruce looks over, Tony and Miles are wrestling for Miles’s Wiimote while Teddy laughs hard enough that he almost slips off the couch. Amy throws a pillow into the fray, aiming for Tony but hitting Teddy in the face instead; within seconds, Teddy’s grabbed her and pulled her onto the floor with him, tickling her viciously while she wriggles and kicks. Dummy leaps up to join the commotion, Butterfingers thunders down the stairs, and suddenly, there’s a literal and figurative dog pile on the floor.

“Please don’t break anything,” Bruce calls out to Tony as the wrestling transforms into a full-on pillow fight with the couch cushions.

“Bones, belongings, or children?” Tony shouts back.

“Any of the above!” Bruce returns—and then he laughs, almost accidentally, as Miles batters his other parent in the face with a couch cushion.

By the time the battle’s finished, with Amy sprawled on the floor like a starfish while the dogs lick her face and both teenage boys gulping their sodas like their lives depend on it, Bruce’s almost forgotten about Jessica’s comment. When he glances back at her, her mug clutched between her hands and her lips rolled together, his heart drops into his stomach. He sips his own coffee, buying time as Tony queues up the next race. For a few seconds, the only sound’s the peppy Nintendo music echoing in from the next room.

Finally, Bruce drags fingers through his hair. “I don’t do much criminal law, but I don’t think he can formally request the files without—”

“He can’t,” Jessica breaks in with a nod. Her hair falls back into her face, and she pushes it away hastily. “It’s just like I said: a courtesy visit. He’d need to either involve Union County law enforcement or get a subpoena if he wants them the formal way, and the fact that he rolled up with coffee and a smile means he knows he can’t get either.” She leans her head against the cabinet again. “I told him that I’d need to staff the decision with my supervisor. Which is bullshit, by the way. I already know her answer, and it’d involve at least three lewd comments about his parentage.”

Bruce snorts a little laugh at that. “Maybe he just wants to be thorough,” he suggests. When she narrows her eyes, he shrugs. “I’ve worked with Logan at least a dozen times, Jessica. He’s not the kind of detective who lives to throw people under the bus.”

“And he’s not the kind of detective you trust further than you can throw, either.” He glances back down at his coffee, and she sighs. “You said yourself you had a bad feeling when he and Munroe showed up to interview Teddy that one night,” she reminds him, and he nods unevenly. “And Munroe came to the funeral, which isn’t exactly standard operating procedure.” She turns her mug around in her hands, her expression slowly softening. “I’m an investigator too, Bruce. I know when something’s not right.”

He presses his lips together. “And something smells fishy to you?” he asks quietly.

“No,” she admits, “but it’s starting to. And _that’s_ why I’m worried.”

There’s another all-out pillow war in the living room a few seconds later, and Bruce excuses himself to referee—only to be dragged down into the fray by his belt loops. He ends up sprawled on the couch, scrabbling for purchase as he half-falls into Tony’s lap, and by time they’re all red-faced and panting, MarioKart’s forgotten. Bruce’s conversation with Jessica is forgotten, too, looming like a far-distant thunderhead as the three children (and one childish adult) traipse into the kitchen for cookies.

Tony squints at Jessica as Miles digs into the fridge for the milk. “Are you here to steal our children?” he asks.

She rolls her eyes. “Depends. Any new lies for me?”

Even with his head stuck in the fridge, Miles’s snorted laugh sounds painful. Tony mimes kicking him in the rear before he steals Bruce’s coffee mug out of his hand. “Not today, but it’s still early. I’ll work on it.”

Jessica, it turns out, likes cookies as much as Amy, Teddy, and Miles do.

Later, once she’s driven away with three Oreos “for the road” and Amy’s sung MarioKart tunes in her bath, Teddy helps Bruce corral her into her bedroom. “You know, you never told me what you did with _tu mama_ ,” Teddy informs her, his accent so dismal that she giggles as she tugs wet hair out of the back of her pajama shirt. He grins in response, poking her lightly in the nose, and she swipes at his finger. “That’s a real question, you know.”

“In real bad Spanish,” she retorts loftily. He pulls a face, and she flops back onto the bed. “Even Miles knows more Spanish than you.”

“Because Miles’s mom spoke Spanish. He was born with an unfair advantage.”

“Yeah, and you’re still a million years older than him, so you had more time to practice,” Amy retorts, and she shrieks with laughter as Teddy plants a knee on the bed to start tickling her. 

From the doorway, Bruce smiles.

Tony and Miles are still lingering downstairs, engaged in another part of the elaborate “Dad Time” scheme Tony’d hatched early that morning. “First we run errands, then we play video games, then we take over the world,” he’d explained in bed, his body still curled against Bruce’s and his lips close to the back of Bruce’s neck. Bruce’d rolled his eyes, but not without smiling. “Because if he’s left to his own devices, he’ll turn bored and moody—and if he runs around with Ganke, well, that’s not really teaching him much about appropriate behavior while on suspension, now is it?”

“Given that it’s Saturday, I’m not sure he’s still suspended,” Bruce’d reminded him.

Tony’d snorted. “You’re so hot when you’re pedantic,” he’d deadpanned, and pinched Bruce’s bare hip when Bruce’d laughed.

Bruce suspects that, as of right now, “Dad Time” involves zombie video games and shouting, but he can’t be sure over the sound of Amy’s screaming giggles. She wriggles out of Teddy’s grip and then off the bed, her pajamas skewed and her hair stuck in her face. “Bruce’s home base!” she announces, and practically tackles Bruce into the hallway as she grips him around the waist.

He laughs—a bright, unexpected sound that surprises even him—and plants a hand on the back of her head. “Bed,” he says. She glances up to pout at him, and he raises his eyebrows. “You won’t answer Teddy’s questions, so clearly, it’s time for bed.”

“We went to church,” Amy blurts, a non sequitur that leaves Teddy snickering as he flops back on her bed. She twists around to glare at him. “We did. They have Saturday church, so we went to church and sung the songs.”

Teddy props himself up on his elbows and grins. “And then?”

“And _then_ , we went to her special house where we ate snacks and played games.” She tosses a glance in Bruce’s direction. “She got Connect Four and that one where you take the pieces out of inside the man.”

“Operation?” Bruce guesses.

“Yeah. I didn’t like that one.” 

“Your mom should get Guess Who,” Teddy suggests. Amy shrugs, her death grip on Bruce’s waist loosening as she gazes over at her brother. Well, not her _actual_ brother, Bruce reminds himself, but by the time the thought solidifies, Amy’s climbing back on the bed to let Teddy brush the tangles out of her hair. Teddy’s gentle, continuing the conversation while carefully working out the knots, and Bruce pretends he’s not listening in as he putters around and picks up Amy’s various dirty clothes.

“Dot says her daddy brushes her hair a hundred times like a princess,” Amy reports at one point.

Teddy snorts. “I don’t think Dot’s telling the truth,” he replies, and the look Amy shoots him is so hateful than even _Bruce_ can’t hold back his grin.

The teen’s on brush-stroke seventy-nine when his cell phone rings, and the smile that blooms over his face when he checks the caller ID is brighter than the sun. “It’s _Billy_ ,” Amy teases, giggling, and Teddy pushes her over onto the bed as he stands. He gestures toward the door, Bruce nods, and away he goes, disappearing down the stairs while he greets his boyfriend with a breathless _hey_.

Amy tips her head up at Bruce and beams. “Billy spent the whole day helping his parents with some special thing and they didn’t even get to send texts,” she reports.

“Tragic,” Bruce intones, and her thousand-watt smile only grows as he takes the brush for the remaining handful strokes. 

(Amy counts every last one.)

By the time Teddy’s off the phone, Amy’s curled up with Joey, her breath soft and even as she drifts off to sleep. Bruce knows this because he lingers in the hall, watching her face in the glow of the butterfly nightlight so intently that he misses the sound of Teddy climbing the stairs. “She asleep?” he asks, and Bruce flinches like he’s a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

From the top of the steps, Teddy smiles. “I did that sometimes at Ed and Sylvia’s,” he admits. “Other families I stayed with had little kids and everything, but Amy— I always worried she might break without somebody to check up on her.”

Bruce forces a small smile, but his cheeks still feel warm as he closes Amy’s door. “Our niece is a fearless ball of bossiness and sass, and Miles is just _Miles_.” Teddy huffs a quiet laugh, and Bruce shakes his head. “I forget about other children—or even how Miles used to be when he first moved in with us.”

“Scared and sad?” Teddy asks. When Bruce blinks at him, he shrugs. “Miles talks a lot about when he first moved in here. I know he’s kind of a pill right now—I think _he_ knows that—but you kind of changed his life.” 

Bruce drops his eyes to fiddle with his watch. “He changed ours, too.”

“Maybe you’re just like that. Life changers.” There’s something so warmly genuine in Teddy’s voice that Bruce can’t quite ignore it, but when he glances up, Teddy’s staring at his own sock-covered feet. “Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat, “Billy wanted to go to the mall tomorrow. Have lunch, spend some time at the movies or whatever. He can’t get his mom’s car, so you’d have to drive me, but—”

His voice softens, starting to trail off, and Bruce smiles. “Happily,” he answers, and Teddy jerks his head up. He looks so surprised that it briefly knocks the breath out of Bruce’s lungs. “We’re acting as your parents,” he says when he remembers how to breathe. “The least we can do is drive you to and from your dates.”

Teddy’s face immediately flares red. “It’s not a _date_ , it’s just lunch and a movie. Normal stuff.”

“You know, I used to say that about my lunches with Tony,” Bruce retorts, and Teddy laughs as they wander downstairs together.

 

==

 

That night, after the house is dark and quiet and their bedroom lights are lowered to a dim glow, Tony runs his fingers along Bruce’s chest. He’s straddling Bruce even now, when he’s still sweat-sticky and red-faced. His lower lip looks swollen, and Bruce resists the ever-present urge to stroke his thumb along Tony’s mouth.

“Even if it’s worse than just a fire,” he says, his voice still rough and raw from open-mouthed panting. “Even if it’s foul play, or arson, or space aliens, even if Howlett gets ahold of the files and finds out every one of these kids’ dirty little secrets, nothing changes. Nothing’s _different_. It’s still us and our kid and these other kids versus the universe.”

Bruce releases a tiny breath as he shakes his head. “You said forty minutes ago you wanted me to ‘distract you out of rational thought,’” he teases.

“And you blew more than my mind, so I think you succeeded,” Tony retorts, and this time, the breath that escapes is a barely-contained laugh. Tony grins, a flash of warmth in the cool night, and spreads his fingers across the plane of Bruce’s chest. “This whole sticky ball of misery is what it is,” he says, “but that doesn’t change who we are—or what we do.”

When Bruce reaches up to cup his neck, Tony tips into the touch, beautiful even in the limited light. “We don’t know how bad it might be,” he reminds Tony gently.

“And that’s never stopped us before,” Tony replies, and he threads his fingers in Bruce’s hair before leaning down to kiss him.

 

==

 

The next afternoon, Teddy glances up from his very serious study of his lunch and presses his lips together. “Can I ask you something?” he questions, his eyes steady and serious.

Bruce frowns. The waitress stops by for a moment to leave them their drinks and straws—soda for Teddy, iced tea for Bruce—and Teddy offers her a smile that disappears the second she steps away. “Is everything okay?” 

“Yeah, I just . . . ” He trails off with a shrug and picks at his straw paper. “It’s not important.”

“Clearly, it is,” Bruce replies, and closes his own menu.

Bruce’d planned to spend his Sunday afternoon marking law school essay exams at a pancake house or a coffee shop, somewhere _away_ from Tony and all three children. Tony’d laughed when he’d said it early that morning, his grin gleaming in the early morning light. Maturely, Bruce’d shoved his shoulder until he’d flopped onto his back.

“I’m sorry that I find it adorable that you think you can spend a few hours without some child-or-dog-related disaster breaking your concentration,” he’d said. He’d leaned over to kiss Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce’d rolled his eyes. “It’s sweet. Very— What’s that book Dot likes with the mama elephant who wants a bath?”

“ _Five Minutes’ Peace_ ,” Bruce’d replied with a sigh.

“Right. It’s like that.” Tony’d reached over to card fingers through Bruce’s hair, and Bruce’d elbowed him again. “It’s not our fault we miss you like the plague when you’re gone.”

“I don’t think people generally miss the plague.”

“A rash, then. Or, I don’t know, the sun.” Tony’d paused, his face crinkling in thought. “Isn’t that a song? ‘Ain’t no sunshine when my very serious law professor husband’s gone?’”

“Sing that in the shower, and your serious law professor husband’s never _returning_ ,” Bruce’d informed him, and Tony’d muffled his laughter by pressing his face into Bruce’s arm.

But he’d also helped steer Bruce out the door a few hours later, armed with his bag, a handful of red pens, and a fifty-dollar bill. “In case somebody thinks the hobo professor lacks an appropriately attentive sugar-daddy,” he’d joked, and kissed Bruce a little too possessively on the doorstep.

Bruce’d finished half the stack before Teddy’d called for a ride home from the mall. And since Bruce’s stomach had started grumbling on the drive back to the house, lunch at a nearby restaurant’d seemed like a good idea.

Now, Teddy stabs ice cubes with his straw and refuses to meet Bruce’s eyes. Bruce allows him a few minutes of silence, squeezing lemon into his tea and adding a half-packet of sugar, but still, the teen stares at the carbonation in his glass like they hold the secrets of the universe. 

“Is this about whatever happened with Billy?” Bruce asks gently.

Teddy jerks his head up, his eyes wide with surprise—and with worry. “How’d you know something happened with Billy?”

Bruce tries desperately to stand on the edges of his smile, but he feels his laugh lines crinkling. “You called for a ride three hours earlier than planned and refused to look at me in the car,” he replies, and Teddy drops his eyes back to the tabletop. “Clearly, _something_ happened.”

“Yeah, well,” Teddy mumbles. He reaches up to toy with one of his earrings—he’s wearing more than when Bruce met him, now, all of them gleaming silver and, according to Billy, all of them borrowed from America Chavez. “Billy’s just— He can be a _lot_ , sometimes.”

Bruce chuckles. “Like Tony can be a lot?” 

Teddy snorts. “No, I mean ten times worse than Tony, because at least Tony’s _fun_ about it,” he replies, but there’s a tiny hint of laughter in his tone, too.

The waitress returns for their orders just then, her pen poised at the ready, and Bruce delays her by picking an appetizer at random. Teddy wrinkles his nose at the concept of stuffed mushrooms, and Bruce grins. “We can always take them back to the house for Miles.”

A look of abject horror flashes across Teddy’s face. “ _Miles_ likes stuffed mushrooms?” 

“Miles likes food,” Bruce corrects, and finally, the teen laughs. His grin’s bright and warm, almost reminiscent of when he’d thanked Bruce and Tony for his birthday cake, and Bruce feels his stomach start to clench. He ignores it to reach for his iced tea. “For the record, you can always ask me anything. I can’t promise that I’ll answer—or that the answer’ll be a good one, or what you want to hear—but I’ll try. And, as a bonus, Tony’s not here, meaning you don’t have to suffer through his editorial comments and creative ‘corrections.’”

Teddy laughs at his finger quotes. “I think you love the corrections.” 

“Actually, the corrections are one of the few things about Tony I _don’t_ love,” Bruce retorts, and he only realizes how easily the sentence’s fallen from his mouth when Teddy’s grin brightens.

A massive party wanders into the restaurant just then—at least two families with small children—and Bruce glances down at his menu as he waits for Teddy to chime in again. When the teen’s quiet for longer than a few seconds, Bruce raises his head to find that he’s watching the strangers settle into their seats. Among the adults are two men in their early twenties, obviously a couple. One slings his arm around the other’s shoulder, leaning in close, and his partner laughs. 

Bruce smiles at that and ducks his head back down to his menu.

It’s when the chaos dips to a dull roar that Teddy murmurs, “How’d you let people know you’re gay?”

It’s soft enough that Bruce almost misses it, and when he glances up again, he finds Teddy staring at his soda. With his head dipped and his eyes half-hooded, he looks frightened, almost lost. The longer Bruce studies him, the younger he looks, a little boy trapped in a man’s body.

Bruce sips his tea before answering, “Technically speaking, I’m not gay.” 

Teddy frowns as he lifts his eyes. “But you’re married to Tony.”

“And Tony’s not the first person—of either gender—I’ve dated.” Teddy’s brow tightens, but Bruce just stirs his tea. “My last long-term relationship before Tony—a long time before him—was with a woman I went to graduate school with. And before Betty, I dated a guy I met in my college dorm.” He shrugs slightly. “Tony jokes a lot about how I’ve left a string of broken-hearted bar hookups in my wake, but mostly, I’ve just dated my friends.” 

The corner of Teddy’s mouth quirks up into a tiny smirk. “Like Tony?”

Bruce smiles as he nods. “Like Tony. I’m guessing Miles told you the whole story?”

“Mostly about your shotgun wedding, but yeah,” Teddy replies, and Bruce rolls his eyes at the laughter in his voice. “That’s not a bad thing. Billy’d kill me if I ever tried something like that, but the fact you loved each other hard enough to dive right in . . . ” He shakes his head a little as he reaches for his soda. “I think that’s pretty cool.”

“It’s more that I found myself caught up in Hurricane Stark with no outlet,” Bruce retorts. Teddy scowls at him, and Bruce chuckles at his disapproval. “Not that I mind. I sometimes think my whole life was building toward Tony. Even when Betty and I were at our best, I don’t know if I ever imagined much of my future, but with Tony—” The words tangle together, and Bruce realizes abruptly that he’s toying with his wedding band. He forces himself to fold his hands. “Tony’s a force of nature.”

“Or the baron from a corny romance novel.”

Bruce immediately frowns. “Never say that where he can hear you,” he warns, and Teddy bursts out laughing.

This time when the waitress returns for their orders, they cobble together quick, nonsensical answers; Teddy accidentally orders double French fries until she gently corrects him, and Bruce asks her to add chicken to a chicken Caesar salad. They laugh at one another, Bruce lightly swatting Teddy in the arm with his menu when he bleats out a subtle chicken sound, and the waitress grins at them as she wanders away. 

Once she’s gone, though, Teddy starts stirring his soda again. “Billy and I met when I was staying at the shelter here in town,” he says after a few long seconds. “My last foster family in Union County were pretty okay, but I’d kind of use their computer to, uh, look at some pictures, and long story short, ‘pray the gay away’ is still a thing some people believe in.” 

His red-faced embarrassment—shame, Bruce realizes, shame that stretches from his collar to his hairline—causes a spike of anger to climb up out of Bruce’s stomach. He tightens his jaw reflexively, and Teddy immediately notices.

“It’s okay,” he says, waving a hand. “It sucked at the time, but Jessica pulled me out as soon as I called her. Better I found out before I really started to like them, and anyway, there are worse places to live than the shelter.” 

For a moment, Bruce thinks of the crowded, now-demolished orphanage in Union County, with its rickety bunk beds and peeling off-white paint. Even now, the smell of the lemon disinfectant haunts him. “Right,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

Teddy nods and curls his straw paper around his index finger. “I had to change schools in the middle of fall semester,” he continues with a tiny shrug. “I didn’t have any friends, didn’t really know how to make them, was still screwed up from moving to a whole new place with my one bag of crap. And there was Billy, this nosy, grinning kid in my Spanish class, and he kind of changed everything.” His smile suddenly creeps into his eyes, and Bruce feels some of his own worry start to uncoil. “I knew—or I _think_ I knew—I was gay way before then, but meeting him still kind of hit me like an asteroid. And Billy, he figured it all out when he was still in diapers, because as weird as he can be about stuff, he never doubted me.” He pauses to purse his lips. “Well, us. He doubts me all the time, but he never doubted us _together_.”

He falls quiet for a few seconds, sipping his soda before he returns to playing with his straw paper. Bruce raises his eyebrows. “Is there a ‘but?’” he asks.

Teddy grins, but the warmth fades quickly. “Billy’s got the most supportive parents in the universe,” he explains softly. “They’re psychologists and _totally_ open minded. If they’d started having kids now instead of sixteen years ago, they’d be the people you hear about on the news who wait for their kids to reveal their gender or whatever.” Bruce bites back a chuckle at that, and Teddy finally raises his head. “Billy told them about us pretty quick,” he continues, slouching back against the booth. “We’d barely been doing anything more than kissing in the movie theater, but he couldn’t keep it to himself. And they were _so_ great about it. They invited me to dinner, they involved me in all of this family stuff— They offered to be my foster parents if I wanted.” He drags fingers through his already mussed hair. “And because of how great they are, Billy wants to be out and open to everyone. He wants us to join the gay-straight alliance at school, he convinced his parents to take us to Pride but then I was on vacation with the Pierponts that weekend, he just—” Teddy sighs. “He _wants_.”

Bruce nods for a moment. “And you don’t?” 

“It’s not that I _don’t_ , it’s just—” Teddy raises his hands in a helpless half-shrug ad casts his eyes up at the ceiling. “Billy’s never been kicked out of anything,” he finally says, voice quiet, “so he’s never learned to be afraid of it happening. And I don’t think he can imagine how it feels to be on the other side, to know that there are people out there who’ll toss you out for thinking or feeling or _loving_ wrong.” He glances back at Bruce. “You know?”

His face is so open, so young and vulnerable, that for a moment, Bruce forgets that the broad-shouldered boy across from him is sixteen, old enough to drive a car and enroll in AP classes. Instead, he’s really just a _boy_ , blue-eyed and terrified, and Bruce’s heart stutters. He remembers dozens of boys like Teddy in his time at the orphanage, and dozens more in Judge Smithe’s courtroom.

And others, he reminds himself, in his own home, huddled in the guest room and waiting for somebody else to pick them up and bring them home.

He glances at his tea and, after a time, shakes his head. “Tony never worries about what people think either,” he admits. “He wears it like a badge of honor. Me, on the other hand, I—” The words stick in the back of his throat, and he shakes his head. When he raises his eyes, though, he discovers that Teddy’s frowning.

He blinks. “What?”

Teddy shakes his head. “Nothing, really. It just kind of surprises me, I guess.”

“It surprises you that Tony doesn’t care about what other people think?”

“No, that _you_ do.”

Bruce snorts, nearly rolling his eyes as he reaches for his tea. “I didn’t grow up the heir to a whole business kingdom with a brilliant brain as my failsafe.” Teddy’s face softens then, and Bruce sighs as he leans his elbows on the table. “I grew up with fear, too,” he says quietly. “I worried that I’d be sent away, that I’d disappoint people, that I’d end up like my father . . . After enough loss, it’s normal to be afraid. And it’s normal to believe—wrongly—that all the good things in life will pass us by.”

Teddy bites his lower lip, his eyes searching Bruce’s face. The happy family at the row of pushed-together tables laughs suddenly, and Teddy glances away to watch them—at least, until the two men kiss briefly. He ducks his eyes away, then, his ears reddening.

“You told people eventually, right?” he asks, and Bruce blinks at him. “About being bi.”

“Eventually, and when I was ready to. Which is the most important part.” His mouth kicks up in an involuntary smile. “Except, of course, when everybody knows your secret before _you_ know it.”

Teddy’s face bursts into a grin. “Tony again?”

“According to our friends, we were the last ones to realize what was happening between us.” Teddy laughs, the sound bold and bright, and Bruce can’t help grinning back. “In my experience, the people you care most about tend to figure out your secrets even when you don’t tell them. Sometimes, they even figure them out first. But there’s no shame in waiting to tell the world until you’re ready for the lumps and the consequences.” He shrugs slightly. “I did.”

“And then you got married,” Teddy teases.

“In that exact order, yes,” Bruce replies, and the teen grins at him.

The stuffed mushrooms arrive shortly after that, and the conversation devolves into Teddy’s tale of the worst mushroom pizza of all time. Bruce laughs hard enough at Teddy’s emphatic gestures and ridiculous expressions that he almost snorts tea, and by the time their entrees arrive, they’ve shared a half-dozen stories about their worst food experiences.

Bruce’s halfway through his salad when Teddy—already finished with his burger and most of the way through his fries—rolls his lips together for a few beats too long. “If you’re going to ask me for my leftovers,” Bruce warns, and he smiles when the teen laughs. At least, until something nervous flits across Teddy’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, and rolls his eyes when Bruce cocks his head to one side. “Really. I just— Well, look. I’ve lived in a lot of foster homes, enough that nothing should surprise me anymore, but meeting you and Tony, and moving in with you guys . . . ” He trails off briefly, his hand running through his hair. When he meets Bruce’s eyes, his expression’s so open and warm that Bruce can’t ignore the way his stomach twists itself into a knot. 

They stare at each other for a beat too long before Teddy shakes his head. “I didn’t expect you both to be as good as you are,” he finally says. “Not just at being parents, but as people.”

For one, painful second, Bruce’s heart climbs into his throat, and the only thing he’s able to do is offer Teddy a limp, one-shouldered shrug. “I’m not sure we’re good all the time,” he says after too long, “but I know we try.”

“You do more than try,” Teddy replies, and when he steals a chunk of chicken off Bruce’s plate, Bruce laughs.

 

==

 

“I’m not entirely sure how it started,” Principal Behrens explains as she leads Bruce down the hallway, her bangles clicking as she gestures helplessly. “To hear the recess monitor tell it, Amy was fine one second and inconsolable the next. She flat-out refused to talk to any adults.” She shakes her head and sends Bruce a slightly hunted look. “I’m so glad you were available.”

“Luckily, I don’t handle hearings on Mondays,” Bruce replies, and Behrens forces an uncertain smile as she leads him into the front office. 

Unlike Castle Rock Middle School in Union County, Edison Elementary on the east side of town is a brand-new building, the tile sparkling and the paint gloriously unchipped. Bruce surveys the scene as he signs into the office, studying the bright pillars of citizenship that are painted onto the wall as he accepts his visitor’s badge. There are photos of students hanging under each pillar, along with tiny blurbs about their various good deeds.

“We try to celebrate when they do good,” Behrens says, and Bruce blinks over to her. She’s young and pretty, in khakis and yellow-gold blouse. She smiles warmly as she nods toward the pillars. “Their teachers or classmates can nominate them. They come in, have their picture taken, get a book of their choice. At the end of the school year, we pick one representative for each pillar and recognize them during the promotion ceremony for the fifth graders.”

Bruce forces a smile. “That sounds nice,” he replies, but there’s no enthusiasm in his voice. Behrens hears it, too, her lips pursing, and Bruce pulls his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Amy.”

“Understandably,” the principal says with a nod. She ushers him toward a narrow hallway. “This way.”

Each door is labeled with a name and title—Behrens’s office first, then ones with names Bruce’s never seen before—and he lets the letters run together in his vision and mind. He’d groaned when Jane’d announced that “the school” needed to talk to him, bracing himself for another solemn conversation with Daisy Johnson. Instead, Lilian Behrens had introduced herself with a worried sigh. “Doctor Banner, I am _so_ sorry to bother you,” she’d said, her voice sticky with barely contained concern. “Jessica Jones is apparently in court today, and I need someone to come for Amy.”

Bruce’d choked on air. “Amy?” he’d asked, almost disoriented. “Is she okay? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Behrens’d replied in a rush. “She’s in with the school social worker, but she’s not interested in talking to anyone. She asked for Miss Jones, you, or your husband. Your name’s first after Jessica Jones’s on the emergency sheet.”

“And Tony’s in a meeting,” Bruce’d said. He’d already stood at that point, groping through the mess on his desk for his cell phone. Phil and Fury’d dragged Tony in for a discussion about the pending appellate case—the sticky, secretive one Tony keeps playing close to his chest—a half-hour earlier, and Bruce’d known from the silence that they were nowhere close to finished. He’d shouldered his office phone as he opened a new e-mail. “I’ll be there in twenty, if not sooner.”

“I’ll meet you at the front doors,” Behrens’d said, but Bruce’d hardly heard her in his haste to send a text to Tony and find his keys.

It’s twenty minutes later, and Tony’s still not responded.

The school social worker’s office is the last in the hallway, and Behrens shakes her dark curls as she places a hand on the doorknob. “The lunch monitors didn’t notice she was crying until one of the younger girls pointed it out,” she explains, catching Bruce’s eyes. “We tried separating them, but she insisted on staying with Amy until Amy calmed down. I didn’t want to force the issue.”

Bruce nods. “That’s fine.”

The principal smiles ruefully. “It might not be when you meet the other girl,” she says, but she opens the door anyway.

Unlike the other offices along the hallway, the social worker’s office is brightly painted and friendly, with light filtering in through the windows. Most of the tile floor is covered in a thick rug, and there’s a variety of toys and games stashed on the shelves that line one wall. There’s an art easel, too, and a small table for a child to sit at—probably, Bruce thinks belatedly, for all the hard conversations the social worker and other school personnel have in this office. Amy sits at that very table, her head bowed and her shoulders jerking in small hiccups, and next to her—

Dot Barnes is rarely shy, but if Bruce’s learned one thing about her, it’s that she knows how to read a room. She slackens her grip around Amy’s shoulders and smiles quietly. “Hi, Uncle Bruce.”

Bruce thinks he hears Behrens squeak in surprise—or, at the very least, he hears her echo the word _uncle_ —but he’s too focused on Amy to notice. Because the second the door opens, the girl’s out of her chair like a shot and rushing toward him, arms outstretched. He catches her roughly, almost stumbling, and she buries her face in his shirt. She’s shaking lightly, and Bruce—almost as a reflex and definitely without thinking—scoops her up.

“You’re okay,” he says, and she shoves her face against his neck. Hides, he thinks, and he cradles her head against him. She’s heavier than Dot, but still lighter than most seven-year-olds, and she smells like baby shampoo.

At the table, Dot’s explaining, “My fairy godfather got married to my Uncle Bruce.” Bruce turns to glance at her—and then, at a puzzled-looking Behrens. He raises his eyebrows at Dot, but she ignores him. “They got Miles after a little while, and now they have my new fairy godbrother, Teddy and his sister Amy.”

“Dot,” Bruce warns.

Dot crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s what happened.”

Amy sighs against Bruce’s neck, her tiny, distressed sounds starting to fade into steady breathing, and Principal Behrens forces a smile. He knows he owes her a long explanation, but he can’t bring himself to start right now, not as he’s slowly soothing Amy. “Why don’t I take Dot back to class, and you and Amy can—”

“Is Tony a fairy?” Amy asks suddenly. Her voice’s momentarily muffled against Bruce’s shirt and skin; when she raises her head, her eyes are wet but curious. “Dot’s a fairy godsister, but—”

“No, _you’re_ the fairy godsister,” Dot corrects. There’s a note of stubbornness in her voice, and Bruce sends her another warning glance. “Tony’s a fairy godfather, and all the kids who call him daddy are fairies because he’s a fairy. Even before they call him daddy, because Miles only used to call him his name like you do.”

Amy frowns. “But—”

“It’s time for Dot to go back to class,” Behrens informs both girls. She holds out a hand toward Dot, who leans back further in her chair. “If you hurry, you won’t have to miss art. Your dad says that’s your favorite.”

“Is Uncle Bruce taking Amy back to work with him?” Dot asks. When Behrens’s expression hardens slightly, the girl whips her head in Bruce’s direction. “Are you? Can I go with? Daddy said next time we have a day off, I can come to work, but if you’re taking Amy—”

Bruce narrows her eyes at her, and this time, she wilts a little. “You need to go back to class,” he tells her, sterner than he ever is with his one-and-only pseudo-niece. “Because if you don’t, either Principal Behrens or I will have to call your dads, and then—”

Dot heaves a sigh. “Fine, but I have to hug Amy first,” she says, and finally pushes her chair away from the table. Amy releases her grip on Bruce enough that he can set her back down. They girls cling to each other and whisper secrets while Bruce rubs his temple.

“I’m sorry,” he tells the principal.

She smiles tightly. “We’re quite used to Miss Barnes at this point,” she promises, and a few seconds later, she leads Dot out of the room.

The door closes heavily behind them, shutting Bruce and Amy in the silent, sunny room. Amy leans her head against his hip for a moment, but she focuses on her shoes instead of up on his face. “Hi,” she says quietly.

He strokes a hand over her hair. “Hi.”

“Miss Behrens said Tony had work and only you could come.”

“That’s true.” 

Amy nods unevenly, her head bobbing under Bruce’s hand. She draws in soft, shallow breaths, still without glancing up. Something tight curls in the depths of Bruce’s belly, and before he even thinks about it, he’s crouching down in front of her and brushing hair out of her eyes. The helpless, frightened expression that flickers across her face nearly chokes him. 

“What happened?” he asks after a couple seconds, and Amy shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Your principal said that you were crying at recess. Did someone pick on you? Did you get hurt?”

She shakes her head. “It happened before recess.”

“What did?”

“The lady with the funny hair came to talk to me.” Her eyes are damp again when she raises them, and he stops brushing hair from her cheeks to rest his hand on her arm. “She brought a man with a funny voice. They asked me a lot of questions, and I didn’t know the answer to any of them, and she kept writing things down—”

Her voice hitches, catching in the back of her throat, and Bruce forces himself to swallow. “Amy, honey, what lady?” he asks gently. His mind flips through all the people in Amy’s life—teachers, therapists, social workers, her mother, distant relatives, virtual strangers—but no one qualifies as _the lady with the funny hair_. The closest he comes is Darcy, and only because she’s started striping her hair with temporary dye on trivia nights.

Amy stares at her toes, and Bruce rubs his hand along her arm. “Amy,” he says, ignoring the thin note of dread in his own voice, “I can’t help you feel better if you don’t tell me who the lady is.”

For a few seconds, the girl stays silent. Her lips press into a tight, trembling line, and when she swallows, Bruce can hear it. She’s fighting against something—maybe tears, maybe fear, maybe both—and he briefly considers abandoning all his worry and just wrapping her up in a hug.

But then, she says, “The police lady with the white hair,” and rational thought races from Bruce’s body.

He feels the anger that charges through his veins, red-hot enough that his face flushes and his eyes widen, and within a half-second, he’s standing and pacing across the tiny office. He’s aware that Amy’s still standing there, staring at him, but more than that, he’s aware of the way his stomach churns. He curls his fingers into fists before running them through his hair; he rubs a hand over his face, but nothing helps the heat recede.

Ororo Munroe came to interview Amy at school. Without a parent, without a guardian, alone with “the man with the funny voice”—possibly Howlett, but more likely Kurt Wagner. And why not? Wagner’s a social worker, an easy in to “we didn’t break the rules” plausible deniability, someone to stand in as a parent while they picked apart Amy’s memories of the Pierpont’s house, of the fire, of—

“I’m sorry,” someone whispers, and Bruce only realizes that he’s still pacing, still fighting with the anger that’s rushing around in his gut and his mind, when he twists around. Amy’s crying now, her face damp and open, and every breath releases in a tiny pant. Bruce’s heart sinks like a stone, and suddenly all of that incandescent, barely contained anger fades into nauseating guilt. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to talk to them, and they started out nice, don’t be mad—”

“No, no, I’m not mad,” Bruce rushes to say. He somehow ends up on his knees in front of Amy, his thumbs carefully brushing her tears away. She flinches the first time he touches her, but not the second. Her whole body trembles. “You didn’t do anything wrong. They did. They shouldn’t have come, and I don’t— I couldn’t be upset at you, not about this.”

Amy sniffles and nods, but then she’s falling into his grip, her arms curling around his neck and clinging on tight. Bruce’s mind reels, filled with questions he can’t answer, but Amy’s shaking too hard for him to index them. Instead, he rocks her slightly, shushing her even as he wonders why Munroe visited her at school without either of her foster parents.

Without her foster parents _or_ her social worker, he corrects, and he feels momentarily seasick.

“What do you mean, they interviewed our seven-year-old without anybody else present?” Tony spits. He’s stalking in circles in his office like an animal trapped in a too small cave, his hands frantic and helpless while Bruce massages his own forehead. Down the hall, Amy sits with Darcy and a box of crayons Bruce found in his bottom drawer, coloring; here, the room feels claustrophobic enough and suffocating enough that Bruce wants to scream. Tony’d started texting around the time Bruce’d corralled Amy into the car, but he’d been so focused on his thoughts and his own anger—never mind on the driving—that he hadn’t responded until he and Amy crowded into the elevator.

Tony’d greeted them in the hallway, his face bright with a grin until he’d noticed Bruce’s expression. When Bruce’d shaken his head, Tony’s face had fallen, and now—

“Somebody knows _something_ , right?” Tony demands, dragging fingers through his hair. “Jess Jones, Jess Drew, _someone_ knows why that silver-haired harpy and her lackey stormed into Amy’s school and—”

“Not a lackey,” Bruce cuts in with a shake of his head. Tony blinks at him, and he sighs. “Howlett wasn’t with her. It was Kurt Wagner.”

“Kurt?” Tony repeats. His brow furrows as he presumably flips through his mental rolodex to find the name. “The social worker with the accent? Skinny jeans every day of the year?” Bruce nods, and Tony scowls. “What the hell is Deutschland Über Alles doing interviewing a kid out of a different county?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce replies. Tony’s mouth pops back open, probably armed with a dozen different questions, but Bruce quiets him with a shake of his head. “They blindsided the principal,” he explains, watching as Tony’s shoulders soften. “Told her they were asking routine questions and that Kurt could step in. Maybe it was innocent, I don’t know, but she never thought to turn them away.” He meets Tony’s piercing, even gaze, and his breath catches momentarily in his chest. “She didn’t think there was anything wrong with a few questions—or with Amy—until she started crying at recess.”

Tony’s head jerks in a nod before he starts pacing again, a hand dragging over his face as he twists away. Bruce presses his lips together, but there’s a thousand questions all rushing through his head, each one louder than the last. Kurt and Munroe know better than to interview a child, even informally, without her parent or an approved state agent present, and Munroe definitely remembers the conversation from when she and Howlett visited Teddy at the house. Why, then, would she sneak in behind their backs? Did she talk to Jessica? Did she _plan_ on talking to Jessica? And then there was Howlett and his records request, the tense tone of the interview with Teddy all those weeks ago, the secretive nature of the investigation . . . 

Bruce only discovers that he’s aired some or all of this aloud when he realizes Tony’s staring at him, his lips parted and his hands slack at his sides. There’s surprise on his face, but it’s not as sharp or strong as the worry—worry that mirrors the sinking feeling in Bruce’s own stomach. Bruce tries to shake his head, to shrug, to show _some_ sort of disinterest, but he mostly feels like he’s on a roller coaster that’s about to plummet out of control.

“Something’s going on,” he says finally, and he knows from the way Tony’s expression hardens that he’s said exactly what his husband’s thinking. “Something is happening with the case, and nobody’s telling us.”

“Nobody’s telling _anyone_ ,” Tony corrects. When Bruce frowns at him, he glances away, like a child with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Half the reason my meeting with Coulson and Fury went long was because I was trying to drop in some subtle hints about the Pierpont case, and let me tell you: the last time I was cock-blocked so hard, it was because our kid didn’t know how to knock and announce outside your bedroom door.” Bruce snorts a little at that, but Tony’s half-second grin never reaches his eyes. “If Fury knows something, it’s his new best-kept secret, because he’s not saying a word. Same as Steve, same as Hill, same as the clerk’s office—”

“You harassed the clerks about this?” Bruce blurts.

“You say harassed, I say happened to be down in the cafeteria at the same time they went to lunch and had enough change for a couple sodas.” Bruce’s jaw tightens, but Tony dismisses his obvious distress with the flap of his hand. “The important part’s not who I harassed about the case, it’s that nobody knows anything—or if they do, they’re not telling.”

Bruce sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose as silence sweeps back over Tony’s office. There’s dozens more things he wants to say—angry curses and frantic, helpless questions among them—but the longer he stands there, the more he feels the fight seep out of him. Really, the fight’d seeped out the second Amy’d apologized for something out of her control, her tiny body quivering in his grip as he hugged her. Now, he feels empty and helpless in a way he’s not felt for months.

Maybe even a year, he thinks, and something deep in his heart starts to ache. Maybe not since that first time Miles cried in front of him, and stole a piece of his heart.

He considers saying _that_ , too—admitting that, the longer Amy and Teddy stay in their home and their life, the more Bruce feels connected to them and wants to protect them—but he’s interrupted by Tony’s hands finding his hips. His fingers spider out and hold on tight, and Bruce leans forward into his grip. They press together, not quite hugging but close enough, Bruce’s forehead on Tony’s shoulder and Tony’s cheek against his hair.

“The more they keep from us,” Bruce hears himself say, his voice low and uneven, “the more I worry about what’s going to happen with the investigation.”

“You’re not alone in that,” Tony replies, and Bruce can’t decide whether that’s reassuring or not.

 

==

 

“Wait, Detective Munroe did _what_?”

There’s anger, real anger, in Teddy’s face and voice when the words burst out, and across the kitchen from him, Tony presses a finger to his own lips. Amy’s asleep in Teddy’s bedroom with Jarvis, the door propped open “in case I need you.” Bruce knows it’s a fitful, restless sleep because he’s watched her toss and turn for the last hour; part of him still wants to hover over her, but instead, he watches the color drain from Teddy’s face.

“They didn’t come to talk to you at school?” Bruce asks carefully.

Teddy shakes his head. “No,” he answers, “but I know what I would’ve told them if they did.”

They’re all already in pajamas, ready for bed, but the house still glows brightly as Tony, Bruce, and Teddy all linger in the kitchen. Even without checking, Bruce is certain that Miles is sitting at the top of the stairs, listening into the conversation below him. Briefly, Bruce thinks he should check, shoo his son up to bed, but then he watches Teddy drag big hands over his face to hide his worry.

Better to let Miles stay up a half-hour too late than to leave Teddy this way, he thinks. 

Teddy releases a shuddering breath and casts his eyes up at the ceiling.

They’d survived most of the way through their normal nightly routine before Amy’d wilted like a flower in too much sun, climbing onto Tony’s lap on the couch and promptly falling asleep. Bruce’d tried not to watch them too closely as he helped Miles with a homework assignment and cleaned up the kitchen, but his eyes and attention’d kept drifting over to where Tony sat, stroking Amy’s hair with one hand and playing on his iPad with the other. Miles and Teddy had both needled for details about Amy’s day, but Bruce’d shaken his head. “Later,” he’d said, until the word’d transformed into a mantra.

Later-later-later, until Amy’d woken up with a gasp and immediately started crying. They’d only coaxed her back to sleep by tucking her in Teddy’s bed, surrounded by familiar smells and the comfort of Teddy reading her the tail end of a Doctor Seuss book.

Teddy’d made it through his goodnight call to Billy before he’d asked, again, what’d happened. Now, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter, he shakes his head. “Why would they bother her?” he asks, his voice low. It sticks in the back of his throat, and his eyes dart between Tony and Bruce. “She’s a little girl. She doesn’t know anything.”

“She’s a witness,” Bruce reminds him, and Teddy huffs out a bitter laugh. Bruce sighs. “I’m not happy about it either, but from the detectives’ standpoint, they’re doing their jobs or—” 

“Or stalking us?” Teddy cuts in. There’s a sharp edge to his tone until Tony raises both eyebrows. A half-second flicker of regret crosses the boy’s face before he shakes his head. “Detective Munroe came to the funeral. She came here that one night. I think she’s talking to Miss Jones, because Miss Jones keeps asking if I know anything, and—”

“Do you?” Tony asks suddenly. Both Teddy and Bruce blink in surprise, but the other man just shrugs. “I’m not accusing anybody of anything—hell, I’m the last person qualified to do that—but if Munroe’s sticking her fingers in where they don’t belong, it’s because she’s expecting something to come crawling out of those holes.” He stares right at Teddy, unabashedly meeting his eyes. “What’s in the holes, Teddy?”

“How would I know?” Teddy demands, throwing up his hands. The anger flickers back across his face as he pushes away from the counter. “God, it’s like no matter how many times I tell the story, nobody believes me. Nobody believes that I was there, that I watched the house burn, that—”

The words crack in half just then, and he twists quickly away. Bruce shoots a tight look in Tony’s direction, but Tony shakes his head. There’s exhaustion on his face, creasing all the fine lines around his mouth and eyes. It ages him, and Bruce’s unsettled stomach clenches at the thought. Then again, he feels like the day’s aged all of them, Amy and Teddy included.

Teddy draws in a thick, shuddering breath, and Tony sighs. “Look, Teddy, we don’t know anything more than you do,” he says after few seconds. “We don’t know what Munroe and Howlett are up to, we don’t know how anything with the investigation’s going. We’ve got nothing. Up a very smelly creek without a paddle, you know?” Still turned away, Teddy nods unevenly. “And so, if Munroe bothered you at school, or if you’ve had conversations that we don’t know about that we can help you make sense of, we should at least pool those resources. Put all the pieces together.”

“Except I don’t.” Teddy’s words are more a whisper than anything else. When he shifts to face them again, his expression’s solemn and serious. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I wish I did. I wish this’d all _stop_ , you know? They’re gone, and nothing’s going to bring them back. The detectives should just leave it.” He glances momentarily at his feet. “They should leave us alone to bury Ed and Sylvia, not rip the pieces back open.”

“Detectives aren’t always too good at that,” Tony says. When Bruce looks over at him, he shrugs. “Maybe not just detectives. Maybe the past in general, what with its nasty habit of rearing its ugly head when you least expect it.”

“Something you know from experience, of course,” Bruce deadpans, and he snorts when Tony reaches over and pinches his hip. It’s all for show, but it’s the exact show that Teddy needs; a tiny smile crosses his face, and when he shakes his head, his eyes sparkle with something other than tears. He wipes his face again, and Bruce purses his lips. “Munroe might still come see you at school,” he volunteers, and Teddy nods again. “If she does, you should ask to call Jessica.”

“Or us,” Tony chimes in. His pinching fingers are hooked in the elastic of Bruce’s pajama pants, but the whole of his attention is on Teddy. “We’re not as cute, but we serve the same sort of purpose.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bruce murmurs, and this time, miraculously, Teddy laughs.

They send Teddy to bed a few minutes later, Tony squeezing his shoulder in something dangerously close to a hug. Bruce trails the teen into his bedroom under the guise of checking on Amy. It’s that, he supposes, or letting the worry choke him.

Teddy’s halfway through toeing off his socks when he pauses. He studies Bruce for a moment in the near dark of the bedroom. “Can I—” he starts, but his voice catches. When Bruce raises his eyebrows, Teddy opens his arms awkwardly. 

Bruce smiles. “Amy just takes hugs when she feels like it,” he points out.

Teddy snorts. “Amy’s tiny and cute, so she can get away with it. Me, on the other hand . . . ”

He shrugs, the words slowly slipping into silence, and Bruce walks over to gather him up in a hug. The teen’s tall, easily taller than Bruce and built not unlike Clint or even Steve, but it still feels like Bruce is the one holding him. Offering him momentary protection from whatever the night might bring.

Like any good parent, he thinks, and he pretends his heart doesn’t stick in his throat.

When Teddy loosens his grip and steps away, it’s with a tiny, self-deprecating smile. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

Bruce smiles back. “You’re welcome,” he says, and squeezes Teddy’s arm.

He lingers only until Teddy’s curled up next to Amy in bed, stretched out like a barrier between her and the rest of the world. The house is quiet and still as he climbs the stairs, and the dogs barely lift their heads from their plush beds as he steps into the master bedroom. Tony’s in bed but not asleep, his cell phone still in his hand as he flips through some news site. He only sets it on the bedside table when Bruce spoons in close and buries his face in the back of his neck. 

“He okay?” he asks after a few seconds.

Bruce sighs as he shakes his head. “I don’t know. Miles?”

“Promised to deliver us an itemized list of his questions tomorrow morning, when he’s less likely to be in trouble for eavesdropping.” Bruce snorts at that, shaking his head, and Tony shifts just enough to glance back over his shoulder. “What about you, big guy? The worry going to eat you alive?”

They study each other in the dim glow of the still-unlocked cell phone, Tony’s eyes soft and steady. Finally, though, Bruce leans forward and presses his lips against Tony’s skin. “Not tonight. It might eat me alive later, but we’re good for tonight.”

Tony settles a short while later, his fingers linked with Bruce’s and his breaths low and steady.

Sleep’s much longer in coming for Bruce.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, Ororo probably could interview Amy with Kurt rather than Jessica or either of the boys and not run afoul of any rules. However, it's definitely poor form to keep it from them and not allow at least Jessica to be involved. (At least, according to a friend of mine who used to be a social worker. We spent a bunch of time talking about best practices for child interviews, because we're nerds.)
> 
> Also, I realize that Miles is a bit absent from this chapter. As the story developed, I needed to rearrange a bunch of events, and the next part of Miles's storyline ended up in Chapter 10. I promise that all the pieces are coming together, but as Chapter 10 is over 14K on its own, combining it with this chapter-- Yeesh.
> 
> The most recent MPU posting schedule (along with information about future stories) can be found [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/94860826547/obviously-there-is-good-news-in-this-post-and).


	10. Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Halloween celebrations are dampened by children coping with loss, school struggles, review hearings, and the cold reality of Bruce and Tony's careers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sara helped me find the [costumes](http://www.pinterest.com/pin/386605949234892799/), because she is very good with Pinterest.
> 
> Bucky's brother Simon (called Augie) is referenced in this chapter. He is featured in ["Water of the Womb"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1815214) and ["Degrees of Consanguinity,"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2058690) in case you missed those. 
> 
> Thanks to uofmdragon and montanagirlm on tumblr for their suggestion for an additional attorney in this chapter.
> 
> And of course, thank you to Jen and saranoh, the greatest betas in the universe. No, seriously, my betas bring all the corrections to the yard.

“And you’ll listen to Dad, Tony, and the boys?” Bucky asks. He’s kneeling in front of Dot, adjusting her hair bow. She huffs and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “Dorothea—”

“ _Yes_ , Daddy,” Dot recites, and Bruce hides his smile behind his coffee mug.

Behind her, Amy fiddles endlessly with her tulle skirt, bunching it up in her hands only to fluff it back up again. She’s messed with her costume no fewer than a hundred times in the last ten minutes, smoothing out her t-shirt and leggings like she’s afraid of ruining them. She’d even ducked away from Teddy—his face painted green for his role as the green eggs—when he’d tried to lean down and tweak her hair tie. “You can’t get paint on it,” she’d instructed.

“The paint’s only on my face,” Teddy’d assured her, but she’d squinted skeptically at him until he’d offered a high-five instead.

Teddy and Billy stand out on the walkway that runs in front of Steve and Bucky’s apartment, their voices covered by the din of the complex’s Halloween fun fair. With all the stress and struggle of the last few weeks, Bruce’d completely forgotten about the holiday—at least, until Steve’d wandered into his office one afternoon.

“Dr. Seuss,” he’d said, his voice surprisingly solemn for an otherwise sunny day. Bruce’d frowned and glanced up from his pile of social worker reports, but Steve’d just shaken his head. “Our daughters are conspiring on their costumes, and they’ve picked Dr. Seuss.”

“Costumes?” 

“For Halloween?” When Bruce’d blinked in surprise, Steve’d sighed and lightly banged his head against the door jamb. “Please tell me they didn’t plot this without any adult input.”

“Steve, I barely know what month it is, most days,” Bruce’d replied, and he’d watched as his friend groaned and closed his eyes.

Thing 1—also known as Dot Barnes—groans at her other father now, her head lolled all the way back as she stares at the ceiling. “I promise I’ll listen,” she repeats, her tone so painfully insincere that Bruce almost smiles a second time. “I’ll be _really_ good, and I’ll share all my candy with Amy.”

Amy jerks her head up from her skirt. “There’s candy at the fair?” she asks.

Immediately, Dot’s whole face lights up. “Yeah!” she announces, twisting away from Bucky fast and hard enough that she almost nails him in the face with her canvas trick-or-treating bag. “They have games and face painting, and last year Miles tried to win a goldfish.”

“I can get a _fish_?” Amy demands. She sends Bruce a wholly disbelieving look, and he shrugs in response. A split-second later, she levels full force of her big brown eyes on a still-kneeling Bucky. “I want to go get a fish,” she informs him.

Bucky rolls his lips together to keep from laughing, but the smile seeps into his eyes. “Will you make sure Dot listens to Tony, Steve, and the boys?” Amy nods vigorously. “And you won’t get in any trouble, either?”

Amy curls her fingers around the hem of her skirt. “Never, Uncle Bucky.”

Bucky grins. “Then go,” he says, and shoos both girls toward the door. Dot latches herself around her father’s neck for a split second before they’re both bursting out of the apartment and out onto the walkway, each of them grabbing a teenager as they move. Teddy almost trips on the edge of one of his fried eggs, Billy mutters something uncomplimentary about ham-related costuming, and then all four children are joining Tony, Steve, and Miles down at the bottom of the stairs. Miles’s floppy stripped hat sways in the breeze as Tony physically restrains their son from rubbing his Cat in the Hat whiskers off his face, and “Red Fish” Steve—dressed in a red t-shirt, hastily spray-painted red jeans, and terrifying red boots—starts herding the group toward the actual fair.

Tony’s line about foxes in socks—as true to his Sam I Am costume as it is absolutely ridiculous—rings out across the autumn afternoon, and Teddy’s laughter carries with it.

“I think that’s the first time anybody’s called me Uncle Bucky,” Bucky remarks as the noise dies down, and Bruce blinks at him.

As always, the Rogers-Barnes apartment boasts just about every Halloween decoration on the market, including new, complicated crafts fresh from Dot’s kindergarten classroom. Tony and Bruce received similar gifts from Amy—strings of ghosts created from tissue and cotton balls, cut-out pumpkins and ghouls, coloring-book monsters—but their quickly decorated kitchen pales in comparison to Steve and Bucky’s living room. Better still, Bucky’s jerry-rigged some sort of motion sensor at the door that creates a blood-curdling scream anyone steps on the doormat. 

Tony’d nearly leapt out from under his red Sam I Am hat when they’d arrived.

Bruce chuckles as he thinks about it.

Bucky, on the other hand, leans against the back of the couch. He’s the Blue Fish to Steve’s red, decked out in a blue t-shirt, blue jeans, blue socks, and spray-on blue hair dye. Darcy’d delivered the last item to work Friday afternoon, muttering about “owing her” and “coffee for life”; now, Bucky’s hair stands up in Crayola-colored spikes that flake subtle blue dust all over everything he touches. He crosses his arms over his bright blue shirt and raises an eyebrow. “You missed it, didn’t you?”

“Missed what?” Bruce asks.

“Amy calling me Uncle Bucky just now.” Bruce shrugs, reaching for a bowl of miniature Snickers bars, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’m not needling you about the kids,” he swears, raising his hands. “Honestly. You know what you’re doing this time around. I just thought it was cute.”

Bruce forces a little smile and shakes his head. The breath he releases sounds more like a sigh than anything else. Bucky purses his lips, his face open but nosy both at once, and Bruce reaches for the candy again. “I know you’re not needling,” he admits after a couple seconds, “but believe me, I have _no_ idea what I’m doing.”

If Bruce is honest—and there’s no way around honesty, not when Bucky’s watching him with sharp, considerate eyes—he’d have to admit that he’s felt out of his depth for the last several days, a stranger in an equally strange land. Ever since her unexpected run-in with Munroe and Wagner, Amy’s drifted back into herself, a far cry from the bubbly, grinning girl Bruce’s spent the last few weeks falling for. She’s avoided Miles, dodged questions and smiles with tiny dips of her head, and—most damningly—she’s snuck downstairs to sleep in Teddy’s bedroom every night for the last week.

Jessica Jones’d released a mile-long string of curses when Bruce’d called her the morning after Amy’s so-called interview, and she’d punctuated the litany with a growling sound. “I’ll fucking kill them,” she’d threatened as Bruce’d run his fingers through his hair. On the other end of the phone, something’d crashed hard against the wall or floor. “Interviewing one of _my_ kids without me? Setting that sweet girl back when the last thing she needs is—”

“They followed the letter of the law,” Bruce’d reminded her. His own voice’d sounded distant and strangled, and Jessica’d huffed out a bitter-sounding half-laugh. “It’s not ideal, but I’ve talked to the school and Amy both. Munroe did what she needed to. She brought a social worker, met on neutral territory, left before Amy completely unraveled. And they—”

“Ignored the spirit of the law _and_ a half-dozen best practices, never mind common courtesy?” Jessica’d snapped back. Bruce’d rolled his lips shut. “Are you honestly trying to justify this bullshit, Bruce?”

“I’m trying to make sense of it.”

“Here’s sense for you: they’re fishing.” Jessica’d paused then, leaving a heavy silence between them. Bruce’d imagined her standing in her office, her fingers playing with a loose strand of hair. For his part, he’d toyed with a pen on his desk. “They’re up to something that they’re not ready to share with the class,” she’d finally continued. “Not with me, not with the Union County police—trust me, I’ve checked—and not with Matt.”

“And not with us, as far as I know,” Bruce’d admitted. He’d stopped turning the pen in idle circles and glanced out the window. “Steve’s waiting on more police reports from the department, but he’s yet to hear anything about an arrest or a charge. We’re operating blind.”

“Exactly.” Jessica’d sighed quietly on the other end of the line. “Maybe they know something, maybe they don’t. I’m not sure. But the last thing Amy needs—the last thing either of them needs, but especially Amy—is to be retraumatized by that fire.” She’d paused again, her serious, steady voice trailing away. “There’s a review hearing for her case coming up. She doesn’t need this hanging over her head, too.”

“I know,” Bruce’d replied quietly, and watched the October rain outside his office.

But Amy’s week’d been painfully overbooked, filled with new spelling words, a special education reading assessment (and the accompanying test anxiety), an extra therapy appointment, and her very first meeting as a member of the Edison Elementary School Daisy Girl Scouts. By Thursday night, she’d transformed into an overtired, contrary girl who bickered about everything from their dinner menu to her bath—and who’d ended the evening by flinging a pencil at the wall during her spelling practice with Teddy.

“I hate spelling!” she’d half-shouted, and by the time Bruce’d rocketed off the couch and crossed into the kitchen, she’d shoved the rest of her school supplies off the table and onto the floor. Tony’d leapt out of the laundry room, his expression a gut-wrenching combination of shock and hurt; Miles, halfway through an ice cream sandwich that nobody’d actually given him permission to eat, had blinked and stared at the girl.

“Amy,” Teddy’d warned, his voice sharp.

“No!” Amy’d snapped back at him. She’d pushed at the edge of the table as though she’d expected to move it, then kicked her feet hard against the cushions on the breakfast nook benches. “I hate spelling, and I hate _school_ , and I hate stupid Doctor Greene and all the questions and Ms. Hill’s test and my bath and—”

Her voice’d shuddered then, nearly cracking, and the red flush of anger on her face crumpled into something softer. Within seconds, she’d burst into frustrated tears and pulled her knees to her chest to bawl into them. Teddy’d reached out to her, and she’d practically fallen into his grip, clutching at his t-shirt and sobbing.

“Bedtime?” Tony’d suggested.

Bruce’d nodded, but his entire body’d felt glued to that spot as he’d watched Teddy press his face into Amy’s hair and murmur her promises too soft to hear. When he’d finally stepped forward to collect the little girl, she’d clung around his neck. He’d carried her up to her own bed that way, Tony following behind him. They’d sat together on Amy’s bed for a long time, Amy clutching Bruce’s shirt while Tony’s big, familiar hand’d stroked up and down her back.

Tony’d eventually left to steer Miles and Teddy into their own rooms.

And Bruce’d spent hours with Amy tucked up against him, asleep in his arms after crying herself to sleep.

She’s better today, almost her usual self, and Bruce glances out the window to watch Dot drag her across the complex courtyard. They’re both laughing, Amy’s face warm and open as she bounces along behind Thing 1. Tony and Miles share an enormous cloud of cotton candy between them as they follow the girls through the crowd, and Bruce feels his belly tighten.

“Bruce?” Bucky asks quietly. When Bruce drags his eyes away from the scene outside, the other man’s leaning against the back of the couch and staring him down. Bruce only remembers his green Grinch wig when he attempts to run his fingers through his hair, so he settles for rubbing the back of his neck. Bucky frowns. “Look, I know the investigation’s stalled or whatever, but if there’s something wrong and we can get to the bottom of it, we—”

“It’s not the case,” Bruce assures him, but he hears the lie in his own voice. Bucky’s blue-painted forehead creases, and Bruce sighs. “Or it’s not _just_ the case. I don’t know anymore.”

Sympathy flashes across Bucky’s face, and for a moment, Bruce’s struck with the realization that Steve absolutely picked the right partner. “Dot said Amy’s had a tough week,” he says gently, and Bruce resists the urge to snort at the understatement. “Munroe upset at her at school, right?”

“It’s not just Amy, though,” he admits, and he watches Bucky purse his lips into another quiet frown. He glances back out of the window, away from Bucky’s subtle worry lines. “Teddy’s a mess, too. He won’t admit it, but since Munroe showed up at Amy’s school, he’s spent more time in his room. Avoiding us, I think.” He shakes his head. “I can coax him out of his shell all right, but Tony— Well, he could use Tony’s unique brand of interference more than mine.”

“But?”

“But Tony’s still stuck on that mysterious project for Phil, and I’m lucky if I can even goad him into coming out of his office long enough to eat half a sandwich.”

Bucky grins a little at that. “I was wondering why our lunches have been so peaceful,” he jokes.

Despite his better judgment, Bruce snorts a little laugh. “Natasha carries the innuendo torch fairly well.”

“Only because nobody wants to hear about Clint and Phil’s sex life,” Bucky retorts. He pauses for a moment, his brow creasing again and leaving strange lines in his face paint. “Except maybe my husband, now that I think about it.”

Bruce shrugs half-heartedly. “I’m not sure I fault him for that interest.” 

Bucky treats him to a full-body cringe and a theatrical shudder, and Bruce can’t help but actually laugh this time. For a moment, they stand there together as Bucky recovers from his shock, the shouts and squeals of the kids below echoing up into the apartment. Bruce finds and unwraps a tiny candy bar, but he knows by the time he’s finished chewing, the smile’s slid off his face again. “I told Jessica that I wasn’t sure the kids needed closure,” he says as he toys with the empty wrapper. “But the more this drags out, the more I’m afraid they’ll never heal from it. Or they won’t heal until the case is closed, at least.”

“Jessica have any ideas?” Bucky asks. 

“Jessica’s spending most of her time either worrying about what’s happening or running interference with Howlett,” he replies. Bucky nods, but Bruce just releases a long, hard breath. “She’s doing everything she can, but even some of that’s out of her control. Tony’s project, Miles’s school issues . . . ”

He trails off, shaking his head as he ducks to throw away the candy bar wrapper. Bucky’s quiet for a few seconds before he admits, “Yeah, I heard about how he’s still not over his school stuff.” When Bruce glances up in surprise, he shrugs. “Our husbands talk, apparently.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “At least he hasn’t called another meeting of our office’s formerly wayward youth.”

Bucky smirks. “Yet,” he notes.

Bruce feels his own lips curl into a smile. “Yet,” he agrees. Bucky’s tiny grin is nearly infectious, but Bruce still glances back at the floor. He scratches his fingers under the awful wig before he says, “We’re due for a parent-teacher conference on Wednesday. His whole middle school team wants to meet with us. I’m afraid Tony might lose his temper.”

“Eh, you’re friends with Union County’s Chief Assistant D.A.,” Bucky returns with a wave of his hand. Bruce shoots him a tight look, and he crosses his arms. “What? I’m being realistic.”

“Except for the part where you think Matt Murdock likes Tony,” Bruce points out.

“Oh, I never said I thought _Tony_ was the one he likes,” Bucky retorts. Bruce snorts another little laugh, but then the other man’s pushing away from the back out of the couch, his face thoughtful. He worries his lower lip for a moment, quietly considering, before he releases a little huff of breath. “Look, for what it’s worth,” he finally says, “I had a shitty time in junior high, too. We kept moving around, I was figuring a lot of stuff out—about myself, about my friends, about who I wanted to be—and you add in my perfect fucking brother on top of that?” He shakes his head. “Point is, I turned out pretty okay.”

“After moving a thousand miles across the country to live with your aunt,” Bruce reminds him.

“To live with the first person who tried to parent me in a way that made sense, yeah.” Bruce blinks at that, his eyebrows rising in surprise, and Bucky shakes his head. His hands drop into the pockets of his clownishly blue jeans. “I love my folks, don’t get me wrong, but they never knew what the hell to make of me. They started with Augie, easiest kid on the planet, and I was a lot of hard work. It all went to shit, but I don’t think it was anybody’s fault. Not when my dad was having trouble finding work, and the moves—” His voice sticks for a moment, and he shrugs. “Aunt Ev never assumed how I’d be, not like my parents did,” he explains. “She took me as I was, and we went from there. And that’s why I turned out the way I did.”

Bruce frowns slightly. “I don’t totally understand what that has to do with—”

“That’s the kind of parent you already _are_ , Bruce,” Bucky cuts in. Bruce’s chest tightens, but when he tries to cast his eyes back toward the window, Bucky tilts his head to hold his gaze. “You and Tony already did that, you know? You took Miles and now these other kids fully formed. Started from who they already were and worked your way up.” He offers Bruce a tiny smile, and Bruce’s stomach clenches. “Miles probably doesn’t realize that now, because he’s thirteen and that’s a crazy time for a kid. But he’s going to figure out the gift he’s got with you two, and when he does, he’ll get it together.” He reaches out to clasp Bruce’s shoulder, his hand big and warm through Bruce’s ridiculous red Santa Claus jacket. “He’ll come out the other end, same as I did.”

Bruce spends a couple seconds trying to remember how to breathe—big, full breaths around the worry that keeps churning around in his stomach—before he finally forces a smile. “I hope you’re right.”

“Steve’ll grudgingly admit that I’m always right, so . . . ”

Despite the ridiculous blue paint, Bucky’s tiny, trouble-making grin lights up his whole face, and Bruce hears himself laughing before he really _feels_ it. He reaches up to squeeze Bucky’s forearm for a second, a silent _thank you_ while the words sit too heavy on the back of his tongue. He thinks Bucky’s about to change the subject to something else—their silly costumes, maybe, or Steve’s latest fashion disaster—when the door to the apartment bursts open. Thing 1 rushes in, wisps of blonde hair framing her face as she runs up and grabs Bruce’s shirt.

“Amy won three fishes!” she announces breathlessly. Her grin’s as wide and bright as her father’s as she tugs Bruce toward the door. “Miles and Teddy and Billy all helped but there are fishes and she wants you to help name them.”

“Congratulations on the additions to the family,” Bucky says with a smirk. Bruce shoots him a warning look, and he holds up his hands. “Hey, it’s not my fault you didn’t forbid _your_ kids from the fish game.”

“I didn’t know you could _win_ the fish game,” Bruce shoots back, but then he’s letting Dot drag him out onto the walkway and down the stairs to the carnival.

He spends the rest of his afternoon out in the courtyard with his family and their friends, eating cotton candy and bobbing for apples in the cool fall air. He loses three different ring-toss games to Miles, buys Teddy and Billy hotdogs—“And you were complaining your costume’s not kosher?” Teddy teases, and Billy elbows him right in the egg white—and helps Steve pick out the appropriate face paint embellishment to go _over_ all the red. 

At one point, Tony—his Sam-I-Am hat crooked and his mouth sticky from caramel-covered popcorn—slings an arm around his waist and kisses him so warm and sweet that Bruce almost forgets all of his worry from upstairs in the apartment. 

The fun fair officially ends when the apartment complex’s manager announces the winner of the yearly costume contest, and somehow, the prize for best themed family costume is assigned to, quote, “Dot Barnes, her parents, her uncles, and her cousins!” Dot demands that they _all_ accept the prize (a twenty-five dollar gift card to a local ice cream shop) together, mugging for the crowd with Amy. It’s the happiest Bruce’s seen Amy in the last week, and somehow, he can’t stop smiling.

“You know I’m not your cousin, right?” Billy asks Dot after they’ve graciously accepted their prize and a not-insignificant number of strangers with cell phones have snapped their pictures. Dot cranes her neck up at him, and he shrugs. “I’m not. I’m like the least-cousiny person here.”

“Unless we’re counting kissing cousins,” Tony points out. He waves his empty cotton candy stick like a baton, and Bruce rolls his eyes. “Hey, I’m just saying. If we change it to uncles, cousins, and _kissing_ cousins, we’ve got all our bases covered.”

Dot frowns and whips her head around to where Steve’s standing with an arm slung comfortably around Bucky’s shoulders. She studies them carefully, her eyes narrowed, but waits until Bucky raises an eyebrow to ask, “Daddy, what’s a—”

“We’ll tell you when you’re twenty-five,” Steve interrupts, and all of them—Billy and Teddy, Miles, Tony, Bucky, and Amy, their whole, accidental, motley family—crack up laughing together.

 

==

 

“And then, there’s the matter of his behavior,” Miles’s team leader says, and Tony rolls his lips together so hard that Bruce half expects them to bruise.

They’re crammed around a table in what Bruce assumes is the middle school’s break room, Tony’s knee pressing hard against his thigh and their shoulders nearly brushing as they smile politely at six harried-looking teachers. Despite introductions, Bruce garbles their names as he glances around the circle; he knows that one of the men (the history teacher, he thinks) is named Mr. Quill, that the English teacher wears a bracelet featuring the covers of famous banned books, and that the math teacher keeps tucking her hair behind her ear and avoiding Tony’s gaze. Otherwise, they’re strangers, nameless faces that he’s meant to match with Miles’s stories—and with the grade sheets that are spread out on the table in front of them.

Miles’s highest grade, in history, is a B-minus. The others run the gamut through the Cs and Ds, and his math grade—

Tony’d almost exploded at the math grade.

He’s still staring at it now, his brow furrowed and his lips still pursed into that tight, hard line, so Bruce sighs and drags his fingers through his hair. “We know he’s not been the ideal student in the last few months,” he begins, and the man who isn’t Mr. Quill releases a rough snort. Tony’s head jerks up, his jaw tightening, and Bruce forces a tense smile. “He’s struggling,” he continues, “and we’re working on it at home.”

“Can we ask what you’re doing?” the English teacher asks. A few of her colleagues glance at her, and holds up both her hands. Her bangles all jingle together. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. It’s just— We’ve seen a definite shift in Miles’s attitude and personality this year, and we thought maybe if we all talked, we could figure out where the trouble lies.” She offers Bruce a tiny, half-embarrassed smile. “We know you’re good parents.”

“Do you really?”

There’s both fire and ice in Tony’s question, his tone clipped and bitter. The English teacher rears back slightly, almost as though she’s been struck, and Bruce sends his husband a brief glance. He’s spent the whole morning drinking ash-flavored coffee and dreading this meeting, and deep down, his stomach feels as unsettled and tight as Tony _looks_. But Tony’s eyes and posture soften when their eyes meet, his jaw loosening until he’s no longer grinding his teeth, and he sighs quietly when Bruce nudges their legs together under the table.

“Ask away,” Tony finally tells the teacher, but Bruce knows without thinking that his heart’s not in it.

They’d waited until Monday to tell Miles about this meeting, half because they’d wanted to preserve some semblance of normal for their Halloween and half because neither Bruce nor Tony’d known what to say to him. “He’s fine at the house,” Tony’d remarked after their Halloween adventures on Sunday night, sprawled across their bed while Bruce’d finished sorting through their clean laundry. He’d glanced over his shoulder to watch as Tony’d tucked his arms behind his head. “You know it’s true. He’s fine here, but he’s Mr. Hyde the second he sets foot in that damn school, and I’m not sure how to figure out where the transformation’s coming from.”

“Do you think he’s unhappy?” Bruce’d wondered.

“In general, or—”

“At school, mostly.” Tony’d quirked an eyebrow at that, and Bruce’d abandoned the pile of clean t-shirts to come over and sit on the edge of the bed. He’d really intended just to sit, too, but then Tony’d grabbed a handful of his t-shirt and dragged him down onto the mattress at his side. He’d ended up using Tony’s shoulder as a pillow and staring up at the ceiling. “Something’s happened.”

“Maybe something was already happening,” Tony’d suggested.

Bruce’d shaken his head. “I thought about that all afternoon,” he’d admitted. When he’d glanced up at Tony, he’d caught the man swallowing his obvious surprise, and he’d sighed. “Bucky talked about how hard his teenage years were,” he’d explained, “and I thought maybe he was onto something. Maybe all this angst, all these issues, they’re just Miles dealing with teenage growing pains. But the more I think about it, the more I—”

“Realize that he used to spill everything before he became our kid?” Tony’d finished for him, and Bruce’d rolled his lips together. Tony’d smiled, but it’d hardly touched his laugh lines, let alone reached his eyes. “It’s bugging you that he’s not pouring out his heart and soul like when he first came to us, isn’t it? That he’s doing the whole ‘teen boy’ thing and leaving his parents to wonder what he’s up to?”

Bruce’d snorted and shifted to glance back at the ceiling. “And it’s not bothering you?” 

“Of course it’s bothering me. It bothers me every day, almost to the brink of distraction.” He’d threaded his fingers through Bruce’s hair, just then, and Bruce’d closed his eyes against the touch. “I don’t have an answer for it,” he’d admitted after a few seconds of precious, warm silence. “I can’t even pretend to understand it, really. But the two things I take solace in are the fact that he’ll come around eventually, and the fact that even when things at school are all-hands-on-deck battle stations, he’s okay here at home.”

“Or he’s hiding how not-okay he is from us,” Bruce’d pointed out.

“If he was as not-okay as you suspect, he’d tell us.” There’d been so much certainty in Tony’s voice, so much _conviction_ , that Bruce hadn’t been able to stop himself from meeting his eyes—or from snaking an arm around his waist. Tony’d pulled him closer and kissed his temple. “He’d tell us,” he’d repeated, and Bruce’d had no choice but to believe it.

But when they’d told Miles about the conference on Monday, he’d fallen completely silent before stalking away and slamming the door to his room. And on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, he’d spent the whole ride to school with his headphones on, staring out the window without a single word.

Bruce’s stomach’d sunk at that, and at the way his son’d glanced at him—wide-eyed and slightly frightened, a silent ghost of his usual self—as he’d climbed out of the car Wednesday morning.

“See you after school,” he’d said, and for the first time, Bruce’d heard worry quiver in his tone.

“Definitely,” he’d replied, and he’d only pulled out of the drop-off lane once Miles’d disappeared into the building.

He’s in his last-hour art class now, undoubtedly watching the clock as his parents sit silently at the crowded table. Tony rearranges the grade sheets like he’s completing some sort of strange jigsaw puzzle while the teachers all exchange glances.

“Well,” begins the young woman in green dress—Miles’s Spanish teacher, Bruce thinks, “Miles has a younger sister, right?”

“No,” Bruce answers, but it’s in the exact same beat as Tony’s automatic, “Yes.” They glance at each other, and Bruce sees his own surprise mirrored in Tony’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Eventually, Tony shrugs, and Bruce sighs. “We have two foster children at home,” he explains, and Tony nods in agreement. “A teenage boy, and a younger girl.”

“Teenage like Miles’s age?” Quill asks.

Bruce shakes his head. “Older.”

“And irrelevant,” Tony immediately chimes in. He abandons the grade sheets to lean back in his chair and cross his arms over his chest. For a brief second, Bruce sees him the same way strangers and opposing counsel see him: the solid-shouldered, blustering attorney in an expensive jacket and shiny tie. A few of the teachers exchange glances, and Tony shrugs. “If you’re asking if there’s something up with his foster siblings, well, that’s a six hour symposium on kids and grief that I’m really not sure you’re up for. If you’re afraid we’re treating Miles worse because we’ve upgraded to a newer model, that’s definitely not the case. And if you think he’s losing the plot when he’s home with us and the other kids, you’re wrong there, too.”

“We’re not saying any of those things,” the other male teacher—the team leader, if Bruce remembers correctly—says. His voice is low and tense as he raises one large hand. “We’re just trying to understand your home dynamic to see if there’s something there that could be trickling into his behavior at school.”

“Yeah, except there’s no dynamic to discuss,” Tony retorts coolly. When Bruce sends him a tight, warning glance, he rolls his eyes. “Seriously, we _just_ talked about this the other night. I thought you agreed: he’s fine at home, he melts down here.”

Bruce sighs. “I did,” he agrees, and Tony’s sharp nod feels more like gloating than anything else. He glances across the table at all the well-meaning faces and forces a small smile. “We’ve thought a lot about Miles’s behavior,” he says, and only the English teacher smiles sympathetically. “He doesn’t act out at home. He might not finish all his homework, or help himself to an extra ice cream sandwich, but he’s fine. It’s when he comes here that he—struggles.”

The last word—not exactly strong enough for the situation, but still the only one that Bruce can finds—comes complete with a helpless little gesture, and across the table, the Spanish teacher nods slightly. The math teacher purses her lips and toys with her pen, still totally silent. Quill, on the other hand, shifts his weight around. “Okay, look,” he says, leaning his arms on the table, “we’re not saying that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just that a lot of us have been doing this for a long time. And part of that is knowing that when grades get _that_ bad—” He gestures toward the collection of grade sheets. “—and when a good kid starts acting up, it means something bad’s happening. Either at home, at school, or both.”

“Which is not to say we’re accusing you of anything,” the English teacher promises. Next to her, the math teacher subtly rolls her eyes, and Tony’s shoulders tighten. “We really do want what’s best for Miles, and if we can help you—”

“Do you have a pamphlet?” Tony cuts in. The words are biting, almost angry, and Bruce purses his lips together to hide his frown. He’s not sure who he wants more to scowl at, his husband or the teachers, but either way, his stomach twists. “Can we subscribe to your parenting newsletter? Anything? Because according to all of you, we must be screwing up left, right, and center, but I don’t exactly see you offering any helpful hints as to what we’re doing or what we need to do.” He uncrosses his arms for the express purpose of throwing up his hands, and Bruce casts his eyes at the nearest wall. “Sorry that we’re not fathers of the year here, by the way, but we were each born to asshole drunks—one with a mental illness, one with the personality of a sack of horseshit—and are still trying to find our footing, here.”

Across the table, the team leader sits up a little straighter. “Mr. Stark—”

“He’s not wrong.” Bruce’s own voice sounds foreign to his ears, tight and angry in a way he’s not used to. The Spanish teacher blinks at him, and he’s suddenly aware of all the angles of his body: balled-up fists, squared shoulders, a jaw that hurts from clenching. He tries to force himself to relax, but his heart’s pounding hard enough to almost hurt. “We’re trying. We try to talk to Miles. We take him to therapy every week. We’re not doing anything different than we did when he was first placed with us. Picking apart our parenting isn’t going to solve that.”

“What about the other children?” Miles’s science teacher, a slight woman with severe eyebrows, stops playing with her pen to glance over at them. “Miles is doing fairly well in my class, and we don’t have issues,” she assures them both, and for the first time all day, Tony’s posture relaxes noticeably. “Once I enter in the next few tests, he’ll be close to a B. But I can’t help but notice that you just said he’s got two new foster siblings. Have you thought maybe that’s negatively impacting his behaviors?”

“You mean the foster siblings he got _after_ his first shoving-match-and-suspension?” Tony asks. Every word’s as sharp and cold as an icicle, but Bruce finds himself nodding slightly. “Because if you think having two other people who he loves in our house is affecting him negatively, then you have another—”

“Just because his behaviors started before his whole world changed doesn’t mean that’s not exacerbating the problem,” the science teacher presses. 

“And just because you spend five hours a week with my kid doesn’t mean you know how much he likes or doesn’t like life with his foster siblings,” Tony snaps back.

“I can’t believe that they think they can just sit us down at a table and shit on our parenting,” Tony announces in the parking lot after they’ve shaken hands with all of Miles’s teachers and thanked them for their time. He crumples the grade sheets in his hand before throwing them at the nearest trash can; when he misses, the November wind catches them and sends them rolling away like tumbleweed. “You think they’d do that to a couple of straight people who decided to pop out another kid? To a well-meaning single mom? No.” He throws his hands in the air. “But you bring in the queer couple with the mixed-raced kid they adopted out of foster care, and it’s open season.”

“Unless they’re right,” Bruce says quietly.

“Did you see how the math teacher kept side-eyeing us the whole damn time? Like she thought we’d maybe smear some of the gay on the table and it’d snake a hand up her skirt. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of it being _the gay_ , but whatever.” Tony releases a long huff of breath and shakes his head. “I met the superintendent once at some Urban Ascent thing. Pep probably has his number, so I’ll call him up in the morning and—”

“Tony.”

The almost-frigid air whips around them, mussing up their hair and tossing Tony’s tie, and for a few seconds, the world narrows until they’re the only two people in the universe. Bruce’s stomach churns as though he’s in a tiny boat on a choppy sea; when he swallows, he swears he can taste his heart on the back of his tongue. They watch one another for a long time, Tony’s shoulders softening and Bruce’s lips rolling together as the words jumble together and never quite form into coherent thought.

“Don’t,” Tony says. Something like fear climbs into his expression and his eyes, and Bruce swears for a minute that he’ll suffocate before he’s able to breathe around the lump in his throat. “Don’t buy into their bullshit. Not about Miles, and definitely not about the other two. You start drinking that Kool-Aid, and—”

“He’s exposed to all of this every day, Tony,” Bruce interrupts, and Tony throws his head back for the express purpose of rolling his eyes. A spike of anger surges through Bruce’s chest, and he grinds his teeth together. “He lost his parents, he lost his uncle, and now—before he’s had any closure over those things, when he’s been our son for all of six or seven months—he’s subjected to daily discussions of death, of parents who can’t care for their daughters, of crimes and fires and—”

“And life?” Tony breaks in. He scoffs when Bruce shoots him a tight look and stretches out his arms. “Look around for ten seconds and you’ll realize that he’s _always_ going to be exposed to that. Through our work, through the news, through his damn video games, he’s always going to be reminded that the world sometimes shits on good people, or rewards the bad, or whatever else you want to shield him from.” He points two fingers at Bruce’s chest. “And, by the way, that’s not even considering those other two kids, who’ve been through a whole different kind of hell and need somebody in their corner.”

“They’re not our children,” Bruce reminds him.

“Says the guy who wanted to hold onto them,” Tony needles, and Bruce feels his jaw tighten. Tony stalks forward like a cat stalking its prey in high grass, every step slower and more methodical than the one before. “The guy who stays up with the crying seven-year-old every time she has a night terror or a panicky moment. The guy who bought Teddy lunch the one day just for some quality heart-to-heart time.” He stops all of eighteen inches in front of Bruce, his face and voice both eerily calm. “You can’t tell me you don’t care about them. That you’d rather feed them to the wolves than help them through this.”

“And so the other option is to feed our _son_ to the wolves for their sake?” The words carry through the cold afternoon, echoing into the distance, and when Tony snorts and rolls his eyes again, Bruce throws up his hands. “You act like everything can be fixed with video games and ice cream and _time_ , and meanwhile, our thirteen-year-old is about to walk out of his first semester with a C-minus average, and that’s if he’s not suspended yet again for—”

“Dad?”

The question’s soft and distant enough that it’s almost lost on the wind and in the echo of Bruce’s half-shout, but that doesn’t prevent his heart from crash-landing in his stomach. Tony whirls around on his heel, an explanation undoubtedly already on his lips, but it’s too late: Miles is standing only a few feet away, surprise and hurt etched across his features. In the distance, Principal Johnson stands at the top of the steps into the school, her hand covering her mouth, and Bruce can instantly imagine what’s happened: she’s sent their son out to catch them and ask about the conference, and instead, he’s overheard their worry—and, what’s worse, Bruce’s comments about Amy and Teddy.

His eyes are wide and wet, and Bruce glances at the ground. He swallows around the shame that’s rising in his throat.

“Listen, kid,” Tony starts to say, the words surprisingly shaky, “I don’t know how much you heard, but your dad and I—”

“Is it really that bad?” Miles’s voice is rough and trembling, and Bruce’s own sharp intake of breath feels like a knife stabbed between his ribs. “I know that I keep screwing up, but— Is it really that bad, with me and Teddy and Amy, that you wouldn’t want—”

The words trail off, floating out into the cold, empty air, and Bruce knows without looking that the frantic footsteps he hears are Tony closing the distance between him and their son. When Bruce finally wrenches his eyes away from the ground, it’s just in time to watch Tony grip Miles’s arms. “Nothing’s _bad_ ,” he says, bending to meet Miles’s eyes. “Okay? I know how this looks, but nothing between you, me, your dad, _any_ of that, it could never be bad. We’re just—” He glances over his shoulder to where Bruce is still standing, frozen, in the middle of the parking lot, and he releases a huff of breath. “We’re worried about you. About what’s happening here and at home, we’re worried that we’re messing it up for you. Which, you know, par for the course with us, but—”

“You don’t talk to us,” Bruce interrupts. Miles’s head jerks up, his face once again blanketed by helpless hurt, and Bruce sighs as he drags his fingers through his hair. He wants to cross the distance between them, too, to hold onto his son the way Tony is, but he feels rooted to the spot. Like the pavement’s reached up and grabbed his feet, he thinks, or like he’s grown roots that he can’t pull from the ground. 

Tony purses his lips. “Big guy, maybe we—”

“You keep having incidents at school,” Bruce continues, his mind barely registering Tony’s voice. “We keep trying to talk to you about it, or finding other people to talk to you about it. We keep trying to give you space, or to push you, but then it happens again and we _still_ don’t know why.” He shakes his head. “Miles, we can’t help you if you don’t—”

“It’s worse if you know it!” Miles breaks in. He jerks away from Tony’s grip, and as he throws up his hands, hot tears course down his cheeks. Every breath is a ragged half-pant, and his voice shudders and cracks when he finally finds the words again. “It’s worse if you know that I can’t hang out with Bree outside of group stuff because I’m the wrong fucking color! Or if you know that Judge spends all his time in computer class googling new ways to call somebody brown on the outside and white on the inside!” 

He swipes at his face, his hands trembling, but the tears keep falling. His express shifts from hurt to anger almost too quickly to track; by the time Bruce draws in a breath to speak, though, the only emotion in Miles’s eyes is sadness. “My math teacher said that it doesn’t matter what grade I get in her class because you’ll get me into college because you’re rich, and I— Things were always hard with my mom and dad, _always_ , but at least nobody ever treated me like this for loving them!”

A shudder runs through Miles’s body then, shaking him like a leaf, and although Tony reaches for him, it’s somehow Bruce who crosses the distance and grabs him first. He fights for a moment, jerking in Bruce’s grip, but the second Bruce shushes him, he falls apart in his arms. Suddenly, he’s as frightened and helpless as Amy during a night terror, his face pressing into Bruce’s work shirt as he finally breaks down and cries. Tony’s whole posture relaxes, and he sighs as he reaches out and wraps up _both_ of them.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce murmurs. He realizes a few seconds too late that his face is pressed to Miles’s short hair and that he’s breathing in the familiar smells of his soap and body spray. He rocks him like he’s the baby Bruce’s never met, tiny and frightened, and he swears his own eyes dampen when Tony leans in and presses lips to his temple. “You scared us, we got worried, and we’re not good at—”

“We’re not good at thinking we’ll break you in pieces,” Tony finishes when the words finally catch in the back of Bruce’s throat and threaten to choke him. Miles lifts his head away from Bruce’s shirt, his eyes red and his face wet, and Bruce feels his heart stutter when Tony dries his cheeks with a gentle them. “We’re not good at thinking about the fact that we could mess up the kid who made us dads, and who got us from somewhere else to, well, here.”

He gestures at the three of them, a loose little flap of his wrist, but only Bruce notices that he plays with his wedding band as he says it. Miles just smiles and leans his weight against Tony’s shoulder for a second, and Tony squeezes an arm around his waist. “Foster kids’ll come and go,” Tony tells him after a couple seconds. “They’ll stay until they need to be somebody else’s, and that’s okay. But you? You’re ours. And _that_ means we can’t rest until we know you’re okay.” He leans back just far enough that he can meet Miles’s eyes. “Okay?”

Miles nods. “Yeah,” he agrees, but Bruce thinks he holds on a little tighter despite the reassurance.

Then again, Bruce holds _Miles_ a little tighter, too. 

 

==

 

“You know that Pepper’s the member of my relationship with the _thing_ about flowers, right?” Natasha asks as she turns yet another page in the three-ring binder. Clint promptly flips her off, but he’s smirking as he pours them each a glass of wine. “I use the same florist as Stark. Saves on the disappointing arrangements.”

“I’d be concerned that Tony sends your girlfriend flowers if I hadn’t met him,” Bruce points out as he glances over her shoulder.

She flashes him a shark’s smile. “Really, you should be concerned the day he _stops_ sending her flowers,” she warns, and Bruce can’t help but laugh as he accepts his glass from Clint.

It’s Thursday night at the Barton-Coulson household, an unusual night and location for Bruce’s weekly meeting of the minds with Clint and Natasha. Natasha’d cancelled on them Tuesday night—something about Pepper, Oscar Wilde, and _snotty art people who need proof I exist_. In response, Clint’d half-suggested, half-demanded they spend Thursday night together to, quote, “keep him company while Phil drinks beer with Fury.” Bruce’d read the text message aloud to Tony that afternoon. 

Tony’d almost physically shoved him out the door.

“This is the best plan!” he’d declared, spreading out his arms as the kids dumped backpacks and library books in various places all around the living room. Bruce’d rolled his eyes, and Tony’d scowled. “Children, tell your father-slash-foster-father that this is the best plan, please.”

“What plan?” Teddy’d asked.

“Ignore them,” Miles’d replied. He’d slid Teddy a soda across the kitchen island, and Teddy’d hidden his smirk by ducking his head to open it. “They do this. It never has anything to do with us.”

“Uh, it has everything to do with you,” Tony’d informed them haughtily. When he’d wriggled a finger between both of them, Amy—armed with a juice box and leaning heavily against one of the dogs—had giggled. “You too, Missy. Because I figure if we have the boys going to hang out with Jessica Jones’s island of misfit toys, you and I can spend time together while Bruce gets some much-needed human interaction.”

“Does that mean we’re not human?” Miles’d wondered aloud. Teddy’d choked on his soda, and Bruce’d pursed his lips to keep from laughing. Tony’s sour little nose-wrinkle only coaxed a tiny shrug out of their son. “That’s kind of what you just said.”

“I’ll ‘just say’ you into next week, Morales,” Tony’d threatened, and they’d pulled faces at one another while Bruce’d climbed the stairs to change out of his suit.

Tony’d joined him all of five minutes later, crowding behind him in the middle of their bedroom floor and resting his chin on Bruce’s shoulder. “You need friend time,” he’d murmured close to Bruce’s ear, and Bruce’d tried not to sway back against him as he’d looped arms around Bruce’s waist. “With Amy’s meltdowns, Miles at school, the whole nine yards, you need a couple hours with people who live under a different roof. The boys’ll go to therapy, and Amy and me, we’ll have fun foster-daddy, foster-daughter time. Math sheets, sight words, maybe some ice cream. Easy, low stress, no unnecessary tears.” He’d kissed Bruce’s neck, and Bruce’d sighed. “You know you need this.”

“I’m still not sure about sending Miles to Teddy’s group therapy,” he’d murmured. Glancing over his shoulder had meant catching the surprise on Tony’s face, and he’d known without thinking that his small, forced smile’d looked fake. “I know Jessica thinks it’s a good idea—”

“You mean Jessica sang her own praises about it?”

“—but Teddy might need to vent about things without Miles sitting three chairs away.” He’d wet his lips. “He might even need to vent about us.

Tony’d spread his fingers across Bruce’s stomach. “And maybe our kid’ll benefit from venting about us with somebody who understands the horrible beauty of living in our house.”

Bruce’d snorted. “I’m horrible and you’re the beauty, I take it?”

Tony’d grinned. “Other way around, but you got it in one,” he’d replied, and nuzzled against Bruce’s shoulder for a moment before he’d ducked away to change out of his own work clothes. 

Miles and Teddy’d been discussing Jessica’s therapy group when Bruce’d trailed back down the stairs, dressed in jeans and a sweater. “That doesn’t mean I’m going out,” he’d warned Tony, but Tony’d just hummed a smug _mmm-hmm_ and continued scrolling through something on his iPad.

“Just don’t hit on Kate or America,” Teddy’d instructed Miles at the kitchen nook. They’d already started their homework, a condition of leaving the house even for therapy with Jessica, and Bruce’d felt a tiny spike of pride as he’d listened in. “Like, no matter how much you think it’s a good idea, don’t do it.”

Miles’d frowned slightly and glanced up from his history book. “Why not?”

“Because Kate’ll be really tempted to punch you in the face if you even try,” Teddy’d replied. Miles’d snorted a laugh, but the other teen’d reached out and placed a big hand over his worksheet. “No, seriously. She’s like Neo when he’s all ‘I know kung-fu’ in _The Matrix_.” Miles’s brow had furrowed, and Teddy’d sighed. “Your parents are depriving you.”

“Tell me about it,” Miles’d returned, and he’d laughed when Bruce’d quirked an eyebrow at him. Teddy’d grinned between them, his first real grin for several days, and ducked his head back down to his own textbook. At least, until Miles’d asked, “And America?”

Teddy’d shrugged. “What about her?”

“Why can’t I hit on America?”

The slow-burn smirk that’d crossed Teddy’s face was so quietly devious that even Tony—knee-deep in what appeared to be a complicated recipe for homemade paella, god help their kitchen and the Suffolk County Fire Department—had glanced over to watch the exchange. For a moment, he’d studied Miles carefully, his lips pursing and his eyes glinting. “I just don’t think you’re her type,” he’d finally said.

Miles’d huffed at him. “I could be her type.”

“No offense, but I don’t think so.”

Immediately, Miles’s jaw had set into a tight line. When he’d puffed up his chest and squared his shoulders, Bruce’d almost burst out laughing. Tony, for his part, had snickered hard enough that he had to cover his mouth with a hand. Miles’d ignored both of them to half-glare at Teddy. “Why couldn’t I be her type?” he’d demanded.

Teddy’s serious face almost crumbled as he shrugged a single shoulder and returned to his homework. “Anatomy,” he’d deadpanned, and the completely heartbroken expression that’d crossed Miles’s face had left all of them in stitches.

But the boys are at therapy now, and Amy—who’d hugged Bruce goodbye at the front door—is undoubtedly eating ice cream for dinner even as they speak. And Bruce stands at Natasha’s shoulder, studying flower arrangements with a glass of wine in his hand.

Natasha frowns as she glances across the kitchen at Clint. “Why are all your flower options purple?” she asks.

“Because purple,” Phil remarks, stepping into the kitchen. He’s wearing jeans and a button-down, and Clint immediately wolf-whistles at him. He rolls his eyes, but the smile that creases his laugh lines also betrays his exasperation. “Can I trust the three of you here without a chaperone? Because I don’t _need_ to sit in on my friends planning my bachelor party.”

Bruce grins around the lip of his glass. “You’re invading the planning session?”

“Less ‘invading,’ more ‘got personally invited,’” Clint clarifies with a shrug.

Phil sends him a slightly peeved look, but it evaporates when Clint hands over his wine glass. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder as Phil sips and hands it back. “Maria thinks I’m more likely to attend if I actually hear their plan ahead of time.”

“Just remember what happens if you don’t show up,” Natasha remarks. She never glances up from the binder of floral arrangements, and yet somehow, it _still_ sounds like a lethal threat.

Phil nods solemnly. “And this is why I should’ve waited to change my insurance beneficiaries until _after_ the wedding,” he replies, and Bruce chuckles at Natasha’s devious little smirk. 

“Hey, a guy’s gotta maintain the lifestyle his fancy-pants boyfriend got him used to, right?” Clint teases. He sidles up to Phil, his hands sliding along Phil’s waist, and Phil visibly relaxes into the touch. He murmurs something close to Clint’s mouth that leaves Clint grinning brilliantly; when they kiss, Phil sighs like something inside him’s just opened up. Natasha rolls her eyes like she plans on gagging and turns back to the binder, and Bruce stares at his wine glass. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he’s interrupting somebody else’s moment. 

He briefly wonders whether their friends feel that way about him and Tony. He’s never asked. 

“Behave,” Phil says after a few seconds, and when Bruce glances back at his friends, it’s in time to watch Clint sliding his hand down the front of Phil’s shirt. “I’d like my house to be standing when I come home.”

“Our house,” Clint corrects. Phil rolls his eyes, and Clint jabs his finger into his chest. “It’s ruining my credit score, too.”

“You can’t ruin a negative number,” Natasha comments as she flips another page in the binder.

Clint pulls a face, but Phil defuses him with a quick kiss on the jaw before he steps away. “Keep each other in line,” he tells the room generally, but Bruce catches the pointed look—and tiny smirk—that Phil sends his way.

“Yes, Dad,” Natasha says dutifully as Phil wanders out of the kitchen. When Clint scowls at her, she frowns. “What?”

“Don’t call him ‘dad.’”

She reaches for her glass, frown deepening. “Why?”

“‘Cause it’s disturbing?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like he’s actually old enough to be my father.”

“And that,” Clint retorts, “is what makes it _worse_.”

Natasha hides her smirk with a sip of wine, but it creeps into her eyes, anyway. Clint curls his lip at her, and for a moment, they hover in a stand-off: Natasha with one perfect eyebrow raised, Clint with his jaw set, both of them ready to bicker like children. Bruce sighs and shakes his head. “Should I ask which one of you wants to be the seven-year-old?”

“You already know the answer,” Natasha replies dryly. 

“And I’m seriously starting to question my taste in friends,” Clint retorts right back. He hauls himself up onto the kitchen counter, bare feet dangling out of the ratty ends of his jeans, and tosses Bruce a glance. “How’s the kid doing?” he asks as a segue.

Bruce resists the urge to snort at him. “Which one?”

“The legally adopted one, mostly.”

“The legally adopted one is— Well.” His breath snakes out as a sigh, and Natasha lifts her eyes away from yet another photo of an arrangement with a distinctly purple tint. He drags his fingers through his hair. “We’re starting him in group therapy,” he admits, staring down at his hands. “More time with other kids his own age, with kids his own _race_. Jessica thinks it’ll help ease some of the growing pains.”

“Is he having that many?” Natasha asks quietly.

Bruce shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he replies, and thumbs the side of his glass. “The parts he told us, they’re complicated. More than your usual teenage angst.”

Clint huffs a little laugh. “I think that’s what every parent says about their kid’s bullshit—no offense to you. Offense to Tony, maybe, but not to you.”

Bruce chuckles, but when he leans his weight back against the countertop, he feels like he might deflate. “The parents of the girl he likes won’t let them spend time alone together because they don’t believe in ‘mixing the races,’” he says. Clint’s jaw tightens like he might punch something, but it’s Natasha whose fingers curl into tight fists. Bruce just raises a hand. “I know. And I’m not happy about it. But I can’t _change_ it either, and he’s pretty heartbroken. Add a teacher with some sort of grudge against Tony’s money and his friend who keeps calling him an ‘oreo—’”

“How the fuck is that even still an insult?” Clint cuts in. Natasha rolls her eyes as she downs a couple more mouthfuls of wine, but he points two fingers at her. “No, sorry, I don’t get how the hell ‘black on the outside, white on the inside’ is a slur.”

“Have you ever been rejected by your whole community?” Natasha retorts. When he opens her mouth, she raises both eyebrows, and he slowly purses his lips into a thin line. She shakes her head, her curls bobbing slightly. “When you grow up ethnically anything—black, Latino, Russian—and your community feels you’re abandoning those roots, it can be—” She pauses just long enough to shrug. “—complicated.”

“Like at the park,” Clint suggests, glancing down at his own glass. Even leaving out the word _trailer_ , they all know exactly what he means.

“Except ten times worse,” Bruce replies quietly, and his friend nods in silent agreement. He buys himself time with a sip of his wine before he shakes his head again. “Rhodey’s offered to spend time with him, but I don’t know if a former Air Force pilot and engineer’s the right person to help him find the roots he’s missing. And worse, I don’t know if he wants to find those roots, or if he just wants to come to grips with the fact that he won’t be able to get them from us.”

Natasha nods slightly and rests her chin in her hand. “And Tony?”

“I don’t think Tony knows where to start.” Clint snorts a little at that, and Bruce cracks the smallest hint of a smile. “He’s overwhelmed with this work project for Phil and Fury, and splitting our attention between the three kids instead of just Miles—”

“Speaking of work,” Clint picks up when Bruce starts to trail off, the words sticky in the back of his throat, “have you heard _anything_ new about what’s going on with the Pierpont case?”

Bruce blinks in momentary surprise, but it’s Natasha, her glass already halfway to her lips, who finds her voice faster. “Have _you_?”

“Uh,” Clint grunts, and shifts awkwardly on the countertop. He stares at the floor, one hand rubbing the side of his neck, and Bruce feels his stomach twist itself into a tight knot. For a few seconds too long, nobody speaks.

Finally, though, the other man releases a long, half-shaky breath. “Okay,” he says, almost as though he’s just decided something important. When he raises his head, he finds Bruce’s eyes, and Bruce’s stomach sinks like a stone. “You know how I talk to Kate Bishop?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Natasha comments with a one-shouldered shrug.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Her case is on ice unless she fucks up, but I still try to help look out for her. Sort of the idea that it takes a village to keep a child out of trouble, right?” He cards his fingers through his hair. “Well, a couple nights ago, she texted me. Said that Munroe and Howlett paid her a visit at her community service hours and pretty much left Wilson wetting himself.”

Bruce swallows around the lump in the back of his throat, his mouth suddenly dry and his heart hammering in his chest. A strange tremble runs through his hands, and he sets his wine glass down on the counter. On the other side of the island, Natasha ducks her head, but he knows she’s watching him through her eyelashes.

He wets his lips. “Did she say what they wanted?” he asks, his voice unfamiliar and distant.

Clint shrugs, but not without nodding. “They said because she knew Teddy, she was one of the best people to ask about life with the Pierponts,” he says. Bruce tries to nod back, but he’s too busy remembering how to breathe around the panic that’s burbling up in the back of his throat. “According to her, it sounded like they didn’t believe everything was sunshine and rainbows at the foster home, but I don’t know. You can only get so much out of her, and I have a feeling she and her buddies circled the wagons pretty hard.”

Bruce jerks his head up in surprise. “Her buddies?”

There’s a moment’s hesitation before Clint nods again. “Kate said the detectives were making the rounds with their group of friends,” he says, every word quiet and careful. “They asked her for Billy’s number, but she said she might’ve transposed the numbers when she read them off.”

Natasha snorts, but not without her lips twisting into a tiny smirk. “Your protégé just admitted to interfering with law enforcement,” she points out.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Ignoring the whole ‘protégé’ thing, the most she owned up to is not being able to read numbers.” Natasha waves a hand at him, and Bruce nearly smiles—at least, until Clint’s sharp eyes settle on his face all over again. They watch one another, Clint’s face carefully neutral as everything in Bruce’s chest and stomach roils and churns. When the other man wets his lips, it’s with a strange finality. “I don’t know what it means,” he admits, “and I don’t know how much faith to put in what Kate told me. All I know is, when I asked Phil, he shook his head and said it’s all above his pay grade.”

“Not much is above his pay grade,” Bruce replies, but the words feel like they belong to a whole other version of himself.

“Not unless Fury’s handling the case personally,” Natasha offers, and casually sips her wine. 

They spend another hour or so discussing other things: Natasha mocks Clint’s taste in flowers, Bruce tells them about Dot’s latest homemade picture book ( _The Adventures of Super Dot and Her Best Friend Godsister Amy_ ), and Sandwich Cat emerges from hiding and weaves her way between their ankles while Clint regales them with stories of her latest antics. It’s a normal night together, except for the uneasy churn of Bruce’s stomach and the way the wine tastes too bitter and heavy on the back of his tongue.

Natasha leaves first, citing a morning presentation at a domestic violence shelter, and Bruce pretends not to notice the worry in her eyes as she squeezes his arm goodbye. They’re in the living room at that point, Bruce on the couch while Clint’s sitting sideways on his favorite chair. They listen to Natasha’s car pull out of the driveway and accelerate into the dark November night, but neither speaks.

At least, not until Clint thumps his head lightly against the back of the chair, his eyes half-hooded. The last few sips from the wine bottle swirl in the bottom of his glass. “Phil doesn’t tell me about the project, either.”

Bruce frowns, his lips rolling together. “Meaning?”

“Meaning Fury likes to keep us compartmentalized, everybody divided.” He sighs before he glances over, his head shaking slightly. “Nobody knows everything, except maybe him. Keeps us from sticking our fingers where they don’t belong. Phil says I’m supposed to appreciate it.”

Bruce snorts quietly. “That’s one word for it.”

“No fucking kidding.” Clint swings his legs off the arm of the chair and shifts around to perch on the very edge, his elbows on his thighs and his glass dangling between his fingers. “I respect the guy, and I trust him, but I still wonder about what he’s up to nine-tenths of the time—and that’s without having my kids on the line.”

There’s a note in Clint’s voice—wistful, maybe, or at least _thoughtful_ —that causes Bruce to wet his lips. “They’re not my kids,” he reminds him quietly.

“It was bullshit when you said the same thing about Miles, too,” Clint retorts, and Bruce rolls his eyes. He attempts a little smile, but it fades the second he notices the seriousness in Clint’s posture—and more than that, in his eyes and face. “I can’t say watch out for him, not when he’s our boss and my guy’s best friend,” Clint continues after a couple seconds. “I can just say that you maybe need to watch out for yourself and your family. You know?”

The back of Bruce’s mouth tastes sour when he swallows. “I know,” he replies, and reaches for his nearly empty glass.

When he arrives home a half-hour later, he finds the house quiet but bright. Tony balances on the very edge of the couch, his laptop teetering on a pile of briefs and legal pads as he frantically types _something_ into a Word document that’s flagged with at least a dozen “track changes” comments. A Disney movie plays on the television, but Amy’s too close to sleep in her favorite chair and covered with her favorite blanket to really appreciate Aladdin’s antics.

Bruce deposits his phone and keys on the kitchen island, tiny tinkles of sound that Tony either misses or ignores; when he leans over the back of the couch to run his fingers through Tony’s mussed hair, his husband jumps like someone’s prodded him with a cattle iron. “Jesus,” he breathes, but he tips his head up into the touch, too.

Bruce chuckles at him. “‘Bruce’ is fine, really,” he teases, and he can’t help but smile when Tony rolls his eyes. They’re quiet for a few seconds, but the longer Tony’s dark eyes sweep over Bruce’s face, the more his brow and lips crease into a frown.

“You okay?” he asks finally, his lips rolling together.

Bruce skims his thumb along Tony’s hairline. All the words that’ve danced through his head over the last few hours—about Fury, about Kate Bishop, about secrets and investigations and two children without a real home—jumble together in the back of his throat, but they’re _there_ and waiting, too. 

But then, he hears a car door slam and Miles’s laughter drift in from outside, and he shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, and by the time their son and Teddy are banging in through the front door, he’s convinced himself it’s not a lie.

 

==

 

“Appearances, please,” Judge Rees says on Monday afternoon, and even as Matt Murdock rises from his seat, Bruce finds himself staring at the heavy doors into Courtroom Four. 

The November cold seeps in through every seam and crack in the Union County courthouse, crawling into Bruce’s pant leg and sleeve and curling around his bare skin. The barely there spark of frustration—of _anger_ —that sits in the bottom of his belly tries to chase it away, but it chills him anyway. He shivers and buttons his suit coat as Murdock clears his throat.

“Assistant District Attorney Matt Murdock appearing for the state,” he introduces, his fingertips pressed to the tabletop. “The child appears in person and with her guardian ad litem, Jessica Drew, and her mother appears in person and with her attorney, Danielle Moonstar. Also present in the courtroom are Jessica Jones of Union County Child Services, Doctor Amanda Greene of the Suffolk County Community Mental Health Center, and foster parents Bruce Banner and Tony—”

“Uh, actually, your honor, that’s not quite right,” Jessica Drew suddenly interjects, and Murdock jerks his head in her direction in what can only be surprise. Bruce twists away from the attorneys, his gut twisting, and stares again at the perpetually closed doors. “It looks like Dr. Banner is here, but Mr. Stark is not.”

Worry, anger, helplessness, and hope—stupid, blind hope, hope he sometimes hate—coil together in the back of Bruce’s throat, and for a second, he struggles to breathe around them. 

Then, Judge Rees releases a breath like a sigh. “Thank you, Ms. Drew,” she says. Bruce closes his eyes as Jessica’s chair creaks and settles. “Any other appearances, Mr. Murdock?”

“No, your honor.”

“Then call your first witness.”

In the back of his mind, Bruce is vaguely aware of a thousand things—Murdock moving toward the podium, Jessica Jones rising to take the stand, Judge Rees swearing her in—but he’s too overwhelmed with annoyance and a strange, persistent hurt to really pay attention. He threads his fingers together in his lap, clutching his own hand until the knuckles are white; he loosens his jaw only to find that it’s sore from gritting his teeth together. When he finally drags his eyes away from the door, he discovers that Amy’s sitting sideways in her chair, her nose and eyes peeking up over the back. _Turn around_ , he mouths, and spins a finger in the air.

Her eyes glimmer mischievously before she wriggles back around. Jessica Drew quirks an eyebrow at her, but whatever words they exchange are lost under Murdock’s questions and Jessica Jones’s easy answers.

A few seats down, Amy’s therapist sends Bruce a warm little smile. “You’re good with her,” she comments.

Bruce forces a smile in return. “We try,” he responds, and only remembers _after_ he’s said it that Tony’s not in the room with him.

Tony’d spent the entire weekend not in the room with Bruce—or, really, with anyone else, either. He’d skulked around the district attorney’s office all Friday afternoon, grumbling and complaining; the longer the day wore on, the looser his tie became and the more his hair stood up on end. When he’d finally wandered into Bruce’s office near the end of the day, he’d slumped heavily against the doorjamb. “Before I tell you the following, lemme remind you that living in a state that recognizes no-fault divorce isn’t an invitation to sign up for one, especially when your husband’s gorgeous and fills your life with b—”

“You have to work this weekend?” Bruce’d asked, and Tony’d dragged his hand through his hair as he’d nodded. Bruce’d sighed and rolled his lips together. “Is there an end in sight?”

“If the appellate division buys the argument in this motion, yes.”

“And if they don’t?” Tony’d averted his eyes, and Bruce’d rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Tony—”

“I don’t know what happens if they don’t,” Tony’d immediately broken in. Bruce’d recognized something tight in his tone, and his own stomach’d clenched. “I don’t like this any more than you, big guy. Actually, I probably like it a lot less, because while you’re stuck worrying about Nick’s smoke-and-mirrors routine, I’m stuck without anybody to bitch to when, trust me, this case deserves all the bitching.” Bruce’d glanced down at his desk, and Tony’d heaved a long, uneven sigh. “I think I can bang it all out this weekend,” he’d said quietly. “One nasty weekend of work, and then I’m done.”

“For now,” Bruce’d murmured.

“That’s the best I can offer right this second, yeah.” When he’d finally lifted his head, Tony’s eyes had bored into him, dark and steady and brimming with something like worry. Bruce’d swallowed, but Tony’d just kept staring. “I’ll make sure I’m one of the hands on deck for Jess’s visit, and I’ll clear my desk off in time for Amy’s review hearing on Monday, but until then—”

“I know,” Bruce’d interrupted, nodding. Tony’d offered him a tiny smile, and somehow, he’d forced a smile in return. They’d watched one another for a few seconds, the silence building uncomfortably between them, before he’d added, “I’ll try to text you reminders to eat.”

All the tension in Tony’s frame had unspooled, and his face’d broken into a warm, welcome grin. “I’ll text you reminders of all the _other_ things I could have in my mouth,” he’d returned, and he’d waggled his hips before he’d disappeared from Bruce’s office.

He’d fulfilled part of his promise, arriving to the house a half-hour _after_ Jessica arrived for her visit and status update and actually staying for dinner before heading back into the office. Twice Saturday night, Bruce’d woken up to Tony’s breath against the back of his neck, their bodies curled together and Tony clinging around his waist like a second skin.

But that didn’t stop a strange uneasiness from settling throughout the house or a bolus of worry from lodging itself in the back of Bruce’s throat. At one point on Sunday, Miles’d walked up to him in the laundry room and knocked their shoulders together. “It sucks when he’s not here,” he’d half-mumbled, sounding almost embarrassed. 

Bruce’d stopped filling the dryer just long enough to look at his son. With his head ducked down toward the floor and his lips pursed, he’d reminded Bruce of child he’d met a year ago, shy and scared of everyone. He’d abandoned a handful of wet socks to squeeze Miles’s shoulder. “I know,” he’d admitted. “Unless something goes wrong, it’s just this weekend.”

Miles’d nodded roughly. “I just kind of like when everybody’s here,” he’d replied, and Bruce’d known without thinking that _everybody_ stretched far beyond just him and Tony. He’d almost asked about that, too, but then Miles’d shrugged. “It feels different, anyway. Not better, but just— More like I imagined.”

Bruce’d frowned. “Imagined?” he’d repeated.

Miles’d jerked his head up, almost like hearing his own word parroted back at him had surprised him, and he’d flushed. “Never mind,” he’d muttered, and grabbed the basket of clean clothes before retreating out of the laundry room.

When Bruce’d found him a few minutes later, he’d injected himself into Teddy and Amy’s rousing game of Go Fish. He’d refused to meet Bruce’s eyes.

Bruce still isn’t sure what he’d meant, exactly.

What Bruce is sure of is that he’d woken up Monday morning to a note from Tony explaining that he’d already left for the office, and that he and his husband—despite Bruce’s best efforts—have spent the last several hours as two ships passing in the night. When Bruce’d left to collect Amy for her hearing, Pepper’d promised that Tony’d be out the door in time to attend. “He made me swear on my still-living mother’s grave that I’d remind him about the hearing,” she’d said, and Bruce’d snorted a laugh. “I think that means he’s serious.”

Serious, but apparently not _genuine_ , because Tony’s still missing when Claudia Jimenez’s attorney walks up to the podium. Bruce tries desperately to focus on Moonstar’s questions—she’s guest-lectured on the Indian Child Welfare Act to several of his law school classes—but he finds himself checking his watch and his phone instead of paying attention to her cross-examination.

At least, until she asks, “What can you tell me about the investigation into the Pierpont fire?”

The question jerks Bruce right out of his own thoughts, and within seconds, he’s staring out into the well of the courtroom. He’s not sure what he notices first, the surprise on Jessica’s face or the way that Amy’s chair wriggles as she pulls her legs up onto the seat, but either way, his breath catches for a split second. On the witness stand, Jessica purses her lips. “I’m not sure—”

“It’s the elephant in the room, Ms. Jones,” Moonstar says, and Jessica’s expression tightens minutely. “Your social work report and your testimony for Mr. Murdock and Ms. Drew reference ‘ongoing trauma’ without really addressing it, and I think it’s important for the court—and Amy’s mother—to know about what you and the police are doing about this.”

“What I’m doing is in my report,” Jessica replies tersely, “but I can’t speak to what the police are doing. That’s not my job.”

“But you’ll admit that the sooner this is resolved, the better it is for Amy?” Moonstar presses. She’s not particularly combative—really, she’s not combative at all, even in her posture—but there’s a tension in her voice and the way she raises her eyebrows. “Ms. Jones?”

Jessica shifts her weight like she’s a half-second from rolling her eyes. “Yes.”

“And your report said that detectives visited Amy at school, correct?”

“Yes, but—”

“And that the experience traumatized her?” 

The chair next to Jessica Drew sways slightly, and the attorney drops her pen to lean over and murmur something to Amy. From his vantage point in the second of the gallery, Bruce can only see the very top of Amy’s head, her curls pulled back in a ponytail. At the next table over, Claudia Jimenez—a pretty woman with Amy’s soft features and darker, straighter hair—chews nervously on her thumbnail. She stares in Amy’s direction for a second or two before she says, “Dani.”

But her lilting voice is lost behind Jessica Jones’s sigh. “Detective Murnoe brought a Suffolk County social worker to the school but didn’t notify anyone that Amy knew,” she answers sharply, her hands rising in a helpless gesture. “She didn’t expect them, and given that the last time she met them was at the scene of the fire—”

Amy’s chair wiggles a second time, rotating toward her guardian ad litem, and Bruce feels his heart leap into his chest. “Dani,” her mother says again, a little louder this time.

“—I’m not surprised she found the experience traumatic.” Jessica shakes her head. “Until I know what the outcome of the investigation is, the best I can do is try to give Amy closure in other ways: with extra sessions with her therapist, with extra training for Claudia so she knows how to talk to Amy about this, with—”

“Visits to a funeral?” Moonstar interrupts. Anger flashes across Jessica’s expression, and she snaps her jaw shut. “You did take Amy to the Pierponts’ funeral, didn’t you?”

“I did, but that has _nothing_ —”

“I _can’t_ ,” a tremulous voice breaks into the cross-examination, and Bruce wrenches his attention away from Jessica Jones just in time to watch Amy shove her chair away from counsel table. Jessica Drew tries to grab it and hold her in place, but she moves too quickly, ducking under her attorney’s arm and backing up into the bar that separates the well of the courtroom from the gallery. All the adults—both Jessicas, Dr. Greene, Claudia Jimenez, even Murdock and Moonstar—jerk their heads in Amy’s direction, and Bruce is able to catch the flash of wide-eyed terror that crosses her face before she heads for the door. “Amy!” her mother shouts, rocketing out of her chair, but then Judge Rees is banging her gavel and telling Claudia to sit.

Bruce only realizes he’s on his feet when he’s halfway to the door. “I’ll get her,” he says over the ruckus—to Jessica, maybe, or possibly to Judge Rees—but then he’s pushing out into the hallway without waiting for anyone’s permission. The tiled floors and high ceiling do nothing to muffle the sound of his footfalls, never mind the distant sound of muffled crying.

Everything he’s felt in the last hour—frustration and anger, worry and mild desperation—collides together in his stomach and chest, his heart racing as he follows the sound of lost little whimpers. He finds Amy sitting at the top of the stairs that lead down to the lobby, her legs tucked up under her dress (a dress she’d picked to show her mother) and her face buried in her arms. Bruce slows for a moment, his heart aching as he watches her.

When he leans down to touch her shoulder, she jerks away and scoots all the way against the wall. There’s fear on her tear-streaked face when she looks up at him—real, tangible, _helpless_ fear—but as soon as it passes, she’s reaching for him. He half-drops, half-falls onto his knees, and she scrambles to grab him, arms around his neck and face in his shirt.

“I don’t want them to talk about Ed and Sylvie,” she cries, and Bruce can’t help himself: he presses his face into her hair and rocks her, shushing her like it’s a reflex. “I don’t want anybody to talk about them. I want them to be happy in my memories, and they keep saying things about the fire, and I don’t—”

She hiccups then, the tears winning out over her shaking voice, and Bruce sighs. “I know,” he murmurs, rocking her gently. “I know how bad it hurts.”

They sit there for a long while, longer than Bruce expects, before he hears footfalls on the tile. He can’t place them exactly, not as they sit in the stairwell and not with Amy snuffling against his shirt. Still, he raises his head, ready to explain Amy’s meltdown to whoever’s come out of the courtroom to hunt them down.

Instead, his mouth dries out.

Because standing three steps below them, his shirt a wrinkled mess and his hair standing up at odd angles, is his husband. 

They stare at each other for a couple beats before Tony wets his lips. “Rough hearing?” 

Something as hot and uncontrolled as a forest fire uncoils in Bruce’s stomach, and for a moment, all he can do is draw in a sharp breath. Draw it in, and then gape at Tony—Tony with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slouched, Tony with his practice casualness and his pursed lips, Tony with Bruce’s heart and trust always ( _always_ ) in the palm of his hand.

There’s a thousand things Bruce wants to say, but Amy’s still quaking in his grip. Over the echoes of her shaky, tearful breaths, he hears the courtroom doors squeak open, and the sharp sound of high heels on tile. No, what he wants to say—to say or scream, depending—needs to wait for later, when they’re alone.

And when he feels like he can breathe again.

He looks back down at Amy and he shakes his head. “Something like that,” he murmurs, and somehow, he resists the urge to add _and you should have been here to know_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last weekend, I held a drabble party on my tumblr. You can read all the ficlets [here](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/search/labor+day+drabble+day). If you're into ficlets, of course. 
> 
> And in case you're not up on your [MPU posting schedule](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/94860826547/obviously-there-is-good-news-in-this-post-and): due to my upcoming trip to Rose City Comic Con, Chapter 11 will be posted next week. I am hoping that the schedule remains accurate from now on. I'll keep you updated on when to look for updates, though, I swear.


	11. Fear and Loathing in Suffolk County

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony finally sort out a few things that have been causing rifts between them—and between Miles and the rest of the world. But, predictably, other rifts are close behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interspousal torts are basically when one spouse sues another spouse for harm (oftentimes, physical or emotional harm). Back in the day, it used to be illegal for spouses to sue each other for civil wrongs, but a lot of states abolished that rule. 
> 
> This one may be my worst chapter title yet. Title enough stories, it becomes exceedingly difficult to be clever.
> 
> Thanks as always to my betas, Jen and saranoh, who repeatedly helped me find repeated words. (Yes, I did that on purpose.)

“Is this the part where you start yelling, or are we just doing the cold shoulder thing?” Tony asks, and Bruce stops brushing his teeth for the express purpose of closing his eyes. The rest of the house is quiet and dark, but the too-bright glow of all the lights in the bathroom burns behind his eyelids. Even without looking, he can imagine Tony standing in the middle of their bedroom, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, waiting.

Bruce’s temper bubbles in his stomach, but he releases a long breath and resumes his assault on his teeth and gums.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like the cold shoulder,” Tony needles. Bruce imagines a languid shrug rolling through his shoulders as he raises his hands. “Lets me know exactly where we are on the ‘pissed off husband’ spectrum, because while I’m not too good at telling whether ‘constipated glare’ or ‘bickering sarcasm’ falls, I know cold shoulder means that you’re seething.” Bruce opens his eyes long enough to dip his head and spit into the sink, avoiding his own reflection entirely. “But the cold shoulder _also_ means we’re not dealing with whatever I did or didn’t do, and since I subscribe to the ‘don’t go to bed angry’ school of marriage, I figure—”

“Stop.”

He’s still staring into the sink as he says it, his own voice sounding foreign and strangled even to his own ears, and Tony abruptly stops talking. Bruce shakes his head as he rinses out his toothbrush and sink, and for a moment, the only sounds in the room are the running water and his own uneven breathing. He splashes his face before he shuts off the tap and allows the drops to roll off his chin and back into the sink.

When he raises his head, he expects to see a stranger in the mirror—some Mr. Hyde version of himself, maybe, or his father—but instead, he stares at a tired-looking forty-year-old with sad eyes.

He’s drying his face with the hand towel when he hears Tony sigh. “Look, I know showing up late was pretty much the worst shit I could’ve pulled today, okay? I know, and I’m sorry, but if we don’t talk about it—”

Bruce scoffs and throws the towel vaguely in the direction of the bathtub. “Because the problem begins and ends with your poor time management,” he snaps, and when he twists to look back out into the bedroom, he finds Tony standing in the middle of the room, staring at him.

He stands helplessly in the bathroom for a few seconds, rubbing his face with his hand and trying to reassemble the thoughts that’ve run through his head all afternoon and evening. In the end, it’d been Jessica Jones who’d rounded the corner to check on Amy but Bruce who’d sat with her for the rest of the hearing, the two of them playing tic-tac-toe on the empty pages of a legal pad while Tony’d ducked inside the courtroom to observe. “Someone should be there,” Bruce’d said blandly, and he’d known from the flash of hurt in Tony’s eyes that the other man’d noticed his frustration.

Good, he’d thought, and that’s when he’d dug into his pocket for a pen.

Once the hearing’d ended and Amy’d finished a short visit with her mom, it’d been close enough to five that Bruce’d driven himself and Amy straight to Miles’s school. Miles’d grinned when he’d spotted Amy in the back seat—they’d traded Jessica Drew stories at the dinner table the night before—but the grin’d slipped away the second he’d found the front passenger seat empty. 

“You and Dad drove separate?” he’d asked as he’d climbed into the car.

“Something like that,” Bruce’d replied, and pulled out of the parking spot.

They’d arrived home to a countertop buffet of Thai food and a quiet Tony who’d offered Bruce a beer with a consolatory little half-smile. Bruce’d tried to smile back, but every muscle in his face’d rebelled against him. He’d ended up shaking his head but accepting the beer. 

Tony’s fingertips’d lingered against his hand, and Bruce’s heart’d crawled into his throat.

The curry’d done nothing to chase it back down into his chest.

He swears he tastes his heart now, heavy on the back of his tongue as he swallows, still staring across the floor at Tony. “I know I missed the meltdown,” he says, all the sarcasm and humor stripped from his voice—and worse, Bruce thinks, from his face. “Pepper came in, she told me I needed to go, but she needed to get the copies to the post office _today_ for everything to count as timely, and—”

“We’re responsible for her, Tony.” The words sound unfamiliar as they echo off the bathroom tile, heavy with uncertainty and something darker, and Bruce shakes his head as he finally steps into the bedroom. “We’re responsible for taking care of her, for comforting her, for protecting her well-being. Her, and Teddy, and Miles.” His voice shakes a little on their son’s name, and he rolls his lips together. “Especially our son. Remember him? The one who asked for you over the weekend?”

Tony heaves a sigh and pulls his fingers through his hair. “Bruce, I know—”

“We’re responsible for them,” he repeats, harsher this time, the words rising even as they quiver. “They need both of us to be there, and the one time you’re expected, the time you _promise_ to be there, you—”

“Show up half an hour late?” Tony interrupts. He throws up his hands, and Bruce grits his teeth as his own fingers curl into fists. “Because maybe you missed this in your cuddly moment of glory, but I showed up. And so, while you have every right to be pissed about a half-hour, you _don’t_ get to act like I just—”

“Except that everything else is falling apart, too!” Bruce snaps, throwing up his hands. He feels the anger rush over him like a tidal wave, but he can’t help it, not as he turns on his heel and paces away from Tony and not as he struggles to breathe. He drowns in it—in the heat that flares in his chest and explodes over his face, in the sound of his voice booming through their bedroom, in his urge to slam a hand into the wall or, worse, slam a door. “These kids are a mess,” he says as he whirls back around, one hand gesturing uselessly toward the door. “They’re lost in grief and fear and a thousand other emotions, and meanwhile, our _son_ is falling apart at the seams! And those are things I could forgive, Tony, except for the fact that you either don’t see it, or you’re _willfully_ ignoring the fact that ice cream and Disney movies can’t fix every broken thing!” 

Tony immediately glances away, his jaw clenching, but Bruce catches the hurt that flickers across his expression. He draws in a breath that’s as shaky as Bruce’s own, his shoulders squaring slightly, and Bruce shakes his head. “Everything in this house,” he stresses, “is a nightmare that I can’t solve alone, but you— Instead of being there and working on it, you’re spending half your time acting like everything’s fine and half your time throwing all of your energy into some idiotic, _meaningless_ appeal that doesn’t hold a candle to what’s going on—”

“Killgrave.”

The word hangs between them, heavy as a load of bricks dropped onto a pane of glass, and Bruce’s voice catches in the middle of the next word. He stands there, his mouth hanging open, as Tony shakes his head. “That idiotic appeal that doesn’t mean anything? It’s Killgrave’s. Fury doesn’t want the rest of the office to know because he’s afraid of the tailspin that’ll follow, but the thing’s six different complaints of prosecutorial misconduct and right now, the only _dream_ we have of shoving it down the toilet is arguing that the shit he complains about wasn’t brought up properly.” He releases a long huff of breath before he finally drags his eyes up to meet Bruce’s, and for a split second, Bruce almost falls into them. “It drags Clint and Coulson back through the mud, never mind the rest of the office,” he adds, his voice soft in the sudden quiet of their bedroom. “We’re trying to avoid the debacle that could—will—follow if we actually go all the way to argument.”

Bruce wets his lips, his mind reeling as though someone’s just slapped him, but he still ends up pulling in a deep breath and shaking his head. “That doesn’t mean—”

“What? That all my sins are magically forgiven? Trust me, big guy, I learned a long time ago that you don’t work that way.” The bitterness that seeps into Tony’s tone just serves to tighten Bruce’s fist, but then Tony’s running fingers through his hair again. “I’ll own to the fact that I threw myself into the motion, okay? To the case, even. I threw myself into it, no-holds-barred, because I could _fix_ it.” He curls his fingers around something unseen, his whole body clenching, and Bruce feels his pulse quicken. “Don’t you get that? It’s not just a motion, it’s a chance to send this fucker away for good, to protect Barton from round two of the worst case of his life and—”

“And to forget about your family in the process?” Bruce breaks in. Tony’s whole expression changes, darkening, and Bruce tosses up his hands. “That’s what you’ve done, Tony, you’ve thrown yourself into this and—”

“And _did_ something instead of sitting around here like an impotent asshole!” Tony’s shout reverberates through the room like a crack of thunder, and for the first time since he started the conversation, Bruce feels his mouth go dry. Tony opens his arms, his t-shirt stretching across his chest, and scoffs at him. “Is that what you want to hear? You want me to advertise all the bullshit that’s going on in my head?” He drops his arms to his sides before he shakes his head. “Fuck, Bruce, you act like you’re the only person in this shit storm who feels anything, the only one whose heart is being fucking torn apart by this crap, and you’re _wrong_.” 

Guilt floods Bruce’s belly and face as he casts his eyes down at the floor, but Tony ignores it to release a long sigh. “You think it’s doesn’t kill me that Miles is in pieces and that nobody knows how to help him, least of all us? Or that the best we can do for these kids—two sweet kids who keep getting _shat_ on, by the way, and don’t get me started about that—is cuddle them and watch them lick their wounds?” He pauses, and in the shock of silence, Bruce swears he can hear his blood pounding his ears. “You’re Dad of the Year, I get that,” he continues after a few seconds, his voice softer. “But the funny thing about our vows is that we swore we were in this together, and that includes when everything sucks and _hurts_. When it leaves us like this.”

He gestures between them, one loose wave of his hand, and Bruce only realizes that he’s shaking his head when Tony’s face crumples in a frown. “Not when you run away,” Bruce says. The two feet between them feels too close, claustrophobic, and he steps back. “Not when you throw yourself into work as an excuse to stop feeling things.”

“Because you’re _not_ doing that?” Tony demands. He rolls his eyes and tosses his head as he asks it, a petulant teenager in a grown man’s clothing, and Bruce feels his temper start to flare all over again. “Standing on your feelings until they eat you up inside is a form of hiding too, you know. So if you think you’ve got the moral high ground here when you’re spending just as much time and energy stamping down on _your_ feelings, big guy, then you’ve got another—” 

“I think I’m _scared_ , Tony!”

The words burst out of him like he’s a balloon filled past capacity, a shout that rattles the nearest windowpane and leaves Bruce feeling breathless. He’s halfway to panting when he rubs his palms over his face, and he realizes only belatedly that Tony’s flinched back a bit, surprise etched on every inch of his expression. He digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, then covers his mouth with his fingers, _something_ to try calming his nerves, but his whole body’s buzzing. Somehow, it’s worse than the time he screamed at Tony in the car, _rawer_ and more real, and every breath burns as he pulls it in.

“I’m scared,” he hears himself repeat, softer this time, and the words shake as he forces them out. “I’m scared for Miles and what happens if we can’t help him, I’m scared for Amy and Teddy and this ridiculous investigation where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing, and worse, I’m scared for _us_.”

“Bruce,” Tony murmurs. His voice sounds like a distant whisper.

“I’m scared about what happens if _this_ keeps happening, these stupid, self-imposed walls that we can’t shake.” His throat thickens, and when he swallows, he realizes how heavy the words feel on his tongue. He forces them out anyway. “I’m scared about what happens if the kids don’t get closure or if Miles can’t find a way out of what’s going on his head, about whether we can handle our son’s issues let alone Teddy and Amy’s, whether—”

“ _Bruce_ ,” Tony repeats, sharper this time, and Bruce only realizes that he’s closed the distance between them when Tony’s hand encircles his wrist.

He jerks at the touch, shivering slightly until he discovers that he’s shaking instead. His stomach churns at that, a sick feeling that he remembers only from years ago—dark, lonely years, ones he’d rather forget—and within seconds, Tony’s gripping him around the shoulders and pulling him in. More than anything else, he falls into Tony’s arms, his body quaking and his fingers grappling for purchase in his t-shirt; when he finally settles, he discovers that his eyes are wet and his breaths are coming in ragged pants.

He’s on the razor’s edge of falling apart, and Tony’s pressing his face into his hair.

“I,” he tries, but his tongue trips, clumsy and heavy in his mouth. “Tony, I just don’t—”

“The empire’s not falling, honey,” Tony says. Bruce feels the words more than hears them, brushes of Tony’s lips and goatee against his scalp, and his knuckles whiten as he tightens his grip on Tony’s shirt. “It’s a little rough around the edges, maybe, a little worn down by the last couple weeks, but it’s standing. _We’re_ standing.” He nudges Bruce’s hip a little, swaying them as they stand on the bedroom floor, and Bruce snorts against his shoulder. “We can get through this.”

“And if we can’t?” He pulls his face away from Tony’s shirt, not really surprised to find that there’s damp under his eyes. Tony leans back enough to meet his gaze, his eyes wide with confusion, and Bruce shakes his head a little. “If Miles crumbles? If we weren’t ready for other foster kids—for _our_ kid—and the long-term result’s—”

“We don’t give up on each other,” Tony breaks in, and there’s so much certainty in the words, so much _conviction_ , that Bruce feels the knot of fear in his stomach finally start to loosen. “The time I deserved you walking away without a second glance, you came back,” he reminds Bruce, a thumb tracing nonsense patterns across Bruce’s spine. “You gave me a chance I maybe didn’t earn, and that’s when I knew you’d never leave me hanging out to dry. Not me, not our kid, and not anybody else you love.” 

Bruce ducks his head, his lips pressing together, and Tony releases him just enough to nudge his chin back up. “For what it’s worth,” he says after a few seconds, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for throwing myself into this damn project, for not pushing you to talk to me, for— I don’t know, for missing whatever it is our wedding vows said I’m just supposed to intuit.”

Bruce snorts, but not without feeling his mouth quirk up into a tiny smile. It coaxes a grin out of Tony, one that crinkles his crow’s feet and brightens his whole face, and he can’t help but huff out a funny little breath. “I don’t remember our vows, but I’m pretty sure your proposal involved you telling me you’d never be a very good partner.”

“And since you don’t sound like you’re arguing that point right now . . . ” Tony teases, but his grin only brightens when Bruce rolls his eyes. He runs a hand down Bruce’s back and then along his side, a constant stream of motion that only ends once he’s cupped Bruce’s hip. “I don’t know what to do about the investigation,” he admits, his voice a murmur meant only for the two of them in their bedroom. “I don’t know what to do about Miles. What I do know is that, tomorrow? I’m handing the Killgrave case off to somebody who doesn’t have three messed-up kids at home, and all that time and energy’s going toward us launching a united front to _deal_ with the three messed-up kids.”

Bruce sighs and glances away. “Tony—”

He holds a finger dangerously close to Bruce’s mouth, and Bruce seals his lips shut. “I’m not doing it because you maybe want me to, or because I screwed up today and want to make it up to you,” he says, his whole face soft and open. “I’m doing it because sometimes I forget the ghosts we both have lurking around in our closet—and that sometimes, we need to air them out with the bed sheets instead of keeping them locked up tight.”

There’s something about the way he says it—the timbre of his voice, maybe, or the way he wets his lips before he finishes his sentence—that steals Bruce’s breath away, and only really realizes that he’s leaning in to kiss him after their mouths slide together. Tony’s fingers curl against his hip, digging into his pajama pants until he can feel the crescents of nails pressing into his skin, and somehow, that only spurs Bruce closer. He threads his fingers in Tony’s hair, holding onto the back of his neck like a lifeline, and he imagines he can feel Tony’s heart pounding in his chest as they tangle together in the middle of their bedroom floor.

He’s still frustrated, he thinks, still lost and frightened in the hell of the last six weeks, but the spools of tension that’ve wrapped around him start to unravel as Tony licks into his mouth. They sigh for one another, but softly, like they’re sharing the fears they’ve each bricked inside themselves.

They’re still kissing quietly when someone knocks at the door, and they pull apart just as Miles peeks in. He’s in too-big Batman pajama pants and one of the Angry Birds t-shirts from a year ago, but his sleep-creased face is anxious. His gaze flicks between them before he asks, “Were you guys fighting?”

“A little,” Tony admits, and Miles nods more in confirmation than anything else. He lingers there for a moment, one foot and half his body still in the hallway, until Bruce wordlessly holds out an arm in his direction; then, relief visibly floods through him until he’s pushing the door open and crossing to the middle of the bedroom. When he presses to Bruce’s side, Bruce’s heart swells almost to bursting. He knows Tony feels the same when he wraps his free arm around their son, too.

“I’m sorry,” Miles murmurs, his cheek pressing against Bruce’s shoulder. “I know I’ve been a jerk, but I never meant to make you—”

“We weren’t fighting about you,” Bruce promises him. 

“At least, not this time,” Tony adds, and he smiles when Bruce shoots him a warning glance. “What? One of these days, he’s going to have to pick between our alma maters, and I can’t promise I won’t yell about that.”

“Great, I can inherit all your old MIT crap,” Miles grumbles. He squirms when Tony pokes him in the side, pressing closer to _both_ of them for a moment. When he finally loosens his grip and steps away—after exceeding all the approved time limits on teenager-parent hugs—he shifts his weight between his feet. “But you’re okay, right?” he asks after a few more, heavy beats.

Tony grins. “Your dad and me are like cats, always landing on our feet,” he replies, and he runs his palm over Miles’s short hair while Miles rolls his eyes and laughs.

 

==

 

Bruce knows, of course, that there are more conversations waiting in the wings, tense exchanges about the Pierpont investigation, about Miles, about Amy and Teddy’s placement. He can feel it burbling between them, an unspoken geyser that lingers just under the surface as they fall into bed together, Tony’s fingers in Bruce’s hair as he scrabbles for purchase. He feels the words on his lips and on Tony’s as they gasp into hungry kisses, as their hips roll and stutter, as Tony leaves half-moon nail marks on the back of Bruce’s shoulder.

He _knows_ , like he knows his own pulse and the sound of his name on his husband’s lips.

But he also realizes that those are conversations for daylight, for coffee in the morning or for sandwiches at lunch, conversations that span over hours and days that they don’t have in the harsh chill of a November midnight. They’re conversations for well-rested men who’ve patched over the immediate hurt, who remember that they love each other beyond snide comebacks and ugly, barbed defense mechanisms.

Bruce presses his palm to Tony’s thigh as he bucks into him, his whole body shaking and balanced on the precipice. In the near-dark of their bedroom, Tony nips his bottom lip before he falls back, keening, his brown eyes almost black with want.

They come apart with their gazes locked, Tony’s gasp like a shout in the darkness and Bruce releasing a strangled cry.

They come apart, but when they curl together after, Bruce can feel them rebuilding, too.

 

==

 

“Trust me when I say that if you want to watch _Sleepy Hollow_ , then that is exactly what we are watching all night without complaint,” Tony swears as he hands Bruce a mug of fresh coffee, and Bruce rolls his eyes even as he accepts it. “I value my place in the universe far too much to fight about it, never mind my place in my bed with my super soft brand-name pillow.”

“You mean _my_ brand-name pillow,” Bruce corrects, hiding his smile behind the lip of his coffee mug.

“I think there’s a saying about that,” Tony retorts, snapping his fingers as though he’s trying to remember something important. “Maybe _su almohada es mi almohada_? Something like that.”

He punctuates it by prodding Bruce in the side, and Bruce snorts a laugh as he sips his coffee. In his place at the breakfast nook, Teddy snickers into his Monopoly deeds. “Laugh it up, chuckles, because you’re still going down,” America Chavez threatens, and leans across the table for the dice.

Teddy screws up his face into a frown. “I’m not laughing about the game.”

“Plus, he’s beaten us every time we’ve ever played,” Kate Bishop points out helpfully. America glares at her, but she shrugs it off as she grabs a handful of Doritos from the waiting snack bowl. “At this point, he’s practically a robber baron.”

“Further proof of my excellent taste,” Billy Kaplan informs both girls, and America pings one of her hot Cheetos off his forehead as he threads his fingers through Teddy’s hair and kisses him on the cheek.

Teddy flares bright pink, presumably because both his friends _and_ his foster parents are watching his boyfriend’s little public display of affection, and Bruce never once tries to hide his smile. He only realizes that he’s lost track of his conversation with Tony when a strong, familiar hand reaches over and gooses him. He squeaks and jumps, splashing hot coffee all over his hand, but Tony just flashes him a charming, mock-innocent smile.

“When I’m explaining interspousal torts in class Tuesday night, I’m using this as an example,” he says, shaking the coffee off with a frown.

“Okay, first, you don’t mean that, and even if you did, who could _really_ blame me for squeezing the produce?” Tony returns, and Bruce rolls his eyes as he heads back into the living room.

For the first time in the last couple weeks, Bruce feels like the dust has finally settled, the thick cloud cover clearing to reveal a sky that’s clear, calm, and bright. Since his fight with Tony on Monday night—a fight he still hears echoing in his head, if he’s honest—they’ve lived a life blissfully free of meltdowns, school disasters, sharp-edged bickering, and battles royale. Everything feels, well, normal.

It helps, of course, that they’re spending a Friday night at home, where nobody’s grounded or banned from their electronics. Teddy and his friends’d arrived back at the house after a dinner of mall food court Chinese only to plant themselves at the breakfast nook with a pile of board games. “Unless you’re not okay with it,” Teddy’d said awkwardly when he’d noticed Bruce watching them, a small smile on his face.

“Why wouldn’t we be okay with it?” Tony’d asked as he’d emerged from the back yard, the dogs bouncing along behind him. They’d practically bowled over the visitors until America’d shot them one very tight, very unamused look and said _no_ ; they’d retreated upstairs after that, presumably looking for Miles- or Amy-shaped comfort. “You have friends. We have room for friends. And you can’t drink booze and start with the heavy petting if you’re in our kitchen.”

Bruce’d bit back a sigh and sent Tony a warning look, but Tony’d shrugged it. “I mean, okay, _technically_ you could,” he’d stressed, and Bruce’d rolled his eyes, “but since we’ll be literally in the next room, I think it’d be hard to get up to anything that’s not—”

“Do they know they’re worse than Barton?” Kate Bishop’d interrupted abruptly. Tony’d stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open, but she’d just walked her Monopoly game piece across her knuckles while she’d shrugged. “Because I don’t know if you realize this, but pound for pound, they are _so_ much worse than the veiled dick jokes.”

“Cute you think they’re veiled, princess,” America’d muttered as she’d cracked open her soda.

Billy’d glanced between the two women as he’d sorted through the Monopoly money, his face creased into a deep frown. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” they’d answered in unison.

Bruce’d expected Amy to demand to play, too—she’d wandered downstairs to nose around the teenagers for a little while, cuddling Billy and complimenting America on her earrings—but she’d ended up just helping herself to a juice box. “I’m still helping,” she’d reported.

“Actually helping?” Teddy’d inquired.

She’d screwed up her face at him. “ _Yes_ ,” she’d informed him, and her voice’d been so packed with Dot Barnes brand sass that Bruce’d almost snorted coffee.

But Dot and her dads had plans Friday night with church friends, leaving Amy in Miles and Ganke’s suspiciously capable hands. She’d followed them around when they’d first arrived home after school, gluing herself nosily to their sides as they’d swapped comic books and seriously discussed the merits of a Batman-versus-Aquaman showdown. When they’d retreated upstairs after dinner, she’d started to follow on their heels.

“We’re just going to put together Legos,” Bruce’d heard Miles explain from the stairwell, and he’d stopped halfway to the couch to carefully watch the exchange. Amy’d wrinkled her nose, halfway to sulking, and Miles’d rubbed his neck. When he’d glanced over his shoulder at Ganke, Ganke’d shrugged. “If you come up with us, you have to help us, not make your own stuff,” he’d finally instructed her. “Because we follow the directions instead of making weird stuff.”

Amy’d scowled at him before crossing her arms over her chest. “My houses aren’t weird.”

Miles’d sighed, barely resisting the obvious urge to roll his eyes. “Amy—”

“I can follow all the directions,” Amy’d promised suddenly. She’d rocked up on her toes, almost vibrating with eagerness. “I’m good at directions, and I like the stuff you make—even if you’re wrong about my houses.”

“She’s kind of right, actually,” Ganke’d offered. Miles’d whirled around to stare at him, obvious betrayal etched on his expression, and Ganke’d shrugged again. “I’ve never seen somebody make a Lego house with a helipad before. It was kind of a cool idea.”

“See?” Amy’d demanded, and she’d grinned when Miles’d rolled his eyes and started up the stairs. She’d even accepted a very earnest high-five from Ganke—shyly, though, since she’d still not decided whether he fell into the “nice boy” category or not.

In truth, Miles’d started dragging himself out of his funk after their exchange in the school parking lot, throwing himself back into school with a stubborn commitment to _not_ failing any more classes. Bruce’d tried to divvy up the credit to those who deserved it—Jessica Jones and her teen support group, Miles’s usual therapist, Teddy’s watchful eye—but for once, he had to admit that the school’d helped rather than hurt.

“If Miles is having a conflict with his math teacher, I can move him into a different class,” the Castle Rock school psychologist—a slender, pretty woman with a default expression severe enough to make Clint look warm and approachable—had explained during their meeting Wednesday afternoon. Bruce’d almost expected Tony to balk at the thought of introducing their son to another mental health professional—and one who worked in a school, no less—but Tony’d actually scheduled the meeting himself. He’d also reached out to grip Dr. Gamora’s hand as they’d walked into her tiny office, introducing them both as Bruce’d admired her collection of potted plants.

After they’d finished up the conversation about Miles’s math teacher, though, she’d slipped off her glasses and offered them a small, placating smile. “I talked to Miles after you called on Tuesday,” she’d said carefully, “and the more we talked, the more I started to think your son’s issues go beyond who’s teaching him pre-algebra.”

“No kidding,” Tony’d muttered, and Bruce’d found himself rolling his lips together as he’d nodded in agreement.

Gamora’d nodded back as she’d leaned her arms on her desk. “He’s a good kid,” she’d told them, “and honestly, I don’t think his disciplinary record accurately reflects the kind of student he is. Most of the students I end up working with are confused, or angry, or fed up. They need an outlet and a sounding board, and usually, they claw their way out of the hole.”

“We’ve tried to be his sounding board,” Bruce’d admitted quietly. Tony’d leaned over in his chair just far enough to bump their shoulders together, a sure sign that worry’d crawled back into Bruce’s tone. “We’ve offered to talk to him, even forced it out of him a couple times, but he’s stubborn. He’s at a point where he’d rather talk to anybody else.”

“And that’s not uncommon for teens,” Gamora’d assured him with a small smile. “You’re clearly good parents. Miles talks about you like you hung the moon and cured cancer in the same afternoon. But how many older teens does he have to talk to? Adult women? Men from his own background?” Bruce’d stomach sunk slightly, and the psychologist’d shaken her head. “You can love him to the end of the galaxy and back, but I think what he needs is something you can’t give him.”

“Because we’re his parents?” Tony’d asked.

“Because no matter how well-meaning you are, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old orphaned black boy.”

Tony’d reared back from the comment like she’d slapped him, his expression teetering between shock and offense, and Bruce’d forced a smile around the guilt that’d churned in his gut. That night, Rhodey’d thrown his head back and laughed so hard that he’d nearly spilled his beer. “Jesus, Tony,” he’d breathed after Tony’d finished complaining about Gamora’s comment. “You think I keep hanging out with your kid just for the hell of it? Because I’ve got a list of shit to do a mile long, and most of it’s got nothing to do with mentoring kids who’re suspended from middle school.” He’d shrugged as he’d kicked his feet up onto their coffee table. “It’s not all altruism on my part.”

Tony’d curled his lip. “I thought they’d drilled all the four-syllable words out of your head back during basic training,” he’d half-sulked. When Rhodey’d rolled his eyes, Tony’d vindictively shoved at Rhodey’s legs until he’d needed to drop his feet back onto the floor. 

Bruce’d pinched the bridge of his nose. “What he means—”

“I know what he means, and I’m ignoring it ‘cause nobody ever taught him to deal with his own screwed-up variety of white guilt.” Tony’d scoffed at that, his arms crossing over his chest, and Rhodey’d sighed. “Tony, look,” he’d said, “I know you think you’ve got all the answers for him, but you don’t. Not on this. He’s a kid whose buddy’d call him a race traitor if he knew the term, and as much as that’s bullshit—as much as we all _know_ it’s bullshit—you can’t know how it feels.” He’d glanced over at Bruce. “Neither of you can.”

After a long, heavy pause, Tony’d wet his lips. “Do I get to point out that Bruce lived in India for a year?”

“No,” Bruce’d answered, and Rhodey’d smiled into his beer. 

Bruce catches himself replaying that conversation as he settles onto the couch, his coffee mug cradled between his hands. There’s some _Dateline_ -type show playing, a holdover until Tony flops down next to him and starts digging through the DVR list, but he can hardly follow the program. Instead, he’s thinking about Rhodey’s offer to spend more time with Miles—lunches or activities every other weekend—and the couple books on transracial adoption he’d dropped into his Amazon cart. 

He’s so caught up in his own head that he only really notices Tony when Tony drops onto the couch next to him and, without warning, deposits his legs onto Bruce’s lap. When Bruce glances over, it’s to watch him shove a pillow behind his back and wriggle around until he’s sitting comfortably against the arm of the couch, his body sideways. 

“I can hear you thinking,” he comments, stretching out his toes and leaving Bruce to roll his eyes. “And since it’s probably _not_ about how I’m husband of the year, I think you need to stop right now and prepare yourself for a marathon of _Sleepy Hollow_ and feelings.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “I didn’t know you’d submitted your name to the ‘husband of the year’ academy.”

He hides his smile behind his coffee mug while a half-second of betrayal flashes across Tony’s face. “For your information, Doctor Banner, I am a front-runner for the title. I’m smart, I’m sexy, and I know for a fact that you love me like a love song, whatever that means.” Bruce snorts into his coffee, and Tony reaches out for the express purpose of poking him in the shoulder. “Plus, I offloaded that appeal, which basically makes me a superhero.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bruce replies. Tony screws up his face like he’s about to argue, and Bruce raises a hand. “Clint would agree with me.”

“Clint,” Tony retorts with a dismissive little finger-wave, “is just bitter that his busy schedule of pre-wedding hanky-panky will be slightly dampened by actual work.” He shrugs as he lifts his own mug to his lips. “Lucky for him, he’s marrying somebody with exactly zero libido _or_ sex appeal.”

“I take it on good authority that Phil’s endowed with both,” Bruce replies conversationally, and Tony’s helpless choking noises are so loud and desperate that the teenagers in the kitchen wander over to investigate.

They’re halfway through the second episode, Tom Mison’s face contorted in some sort of weird pause-button grimace as Bruce and Tony debate the relative merits of deep-frying a Thanksgiving turkey—“No,” Bruce says for the fifth time, and Tony rolls his eyes—when the doorbell rings. They exchange suspicious glances, a whole conversation without words (about who’d show up after eight p.m. on a dreary November night) beginning and ending before Kate clambers over America and climbs out of the breakfast nook. “Cassie said she’d swing by after she helped her mom with whatever crazy mom thing she’s up to today,” she explains as she trots toward the door. “Billy, deal her in.”

Still in the kitchen, Billy rolls his eyes. “You can’t deal someone into Monopoly when you’ve already—”

“Stop whining about how you’re going to lose and deal her _in_ ,” Kate retorts, her ponytail swishing as she disappears around the corner.

“Can we keep that one?” Tony asks in a mock-whisper, and Bruce pinches his ankle as he unpauses the DVR.

In the future, he knows he’ll blame that decision, that single push of a button, for what happens next. For why he missed Kate’s abrupt silence when she opened the door, for why he never heard a gruff voice address her as _Miss Bishop_ , for why he missed heavy footfalls on tile.

Because instead of noticing those things—instead of cataloguing and compartmentalizing them, steeling himself for what might happen next—he only notices the sound of Kate clearing her throat and following it with an awkward, “Uh, Doctor Banner?” 

“Lemme guess,” Tony says, twisting around to glance over the back of the couch, “Cassie brought Eli, who brought the one who has a crush on Teddy, and we’re about to become a halfway house for wayward—”

The words dry up in his throat abruptly, choking off until they’re nothing but a thick gulp of air. Bruce pauses the DVR before he turns to look over the back of the couch, half expecting some kind of prank to be waiting for him—and then, he forgets how to breathe at all. 

Standing in the space between the hallway and the living room, Detective Ororo Munroe forces a polite smile. She’s dressed in street clothes, her hair windswept from the brisk November breeze. A few steps behind her, Howlett’s unzipping his coat. 

“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” she says in lieu of a greeting, “but we’d like to speak to Teddy for a few minutes.”

Dread twists in Bruce’s stomach, but it’s not nearly as strong as the frustration he feels when Kate mouths _sorry_ and drops her eyes to the floor. Tony either senses it or feels the same, because _that’s_ what spurs him into action, and within seconds, he’s springing to his feet. “Well, if we’d known you were coming, we definitely would not have baked a cake,” he informs the detectives, and Howlett’s mouth twists in subdued amusement. “Hired a band, maybe, but only if they played that song from _Star Wars_. What’s it called, Vader’s marching tune?”

“‘The Imperial March,’” Bruce supplies. He shuts off the DVR, an excuse to steady himself while Tony snaps in victory and, presumably, points a finger toward Munroe and Howlett.

“Right, that one. Kind of fitting, since you both show up like members of a leather gang who’re on their way to a funeral.”

“I understand your frustration, Mister Stark,” Munroe replies, a sharp, cool edge to her tone, “but unless you’d rather we come back tomorrow—”

“I’d rather you come back never, what with the traumatizing Amy at school when nobody was there to stick up for her, but since that’s obviously not an option, we might as well do it now.” If Munroe’s tone is coated with thin, brittle ice, then Tony’s is red-hot and licked by flame. When Bruce finally rises, it’s to discover that his husband is standing in the middle of the floor, his shoulders squared and his hands on his hips, his whole body taut. A weird sort of pride flickers through Bruce, almost overwhelming him.

Or at least, overwhelming him until Munroe draws in a sharp breath. “It’s okay,” Bruce assures her, raising a hand as he comes around the couch. “We know how this works. If now’s the best time, it’s the best time.”

Tony quirks an eyebrow at him, his face more curious than hurt or betrayed, and Bruce quickly shakes his head. He wills Tony to recognize this battle for what it is—an impossible one, an instant loss rather than a possible win. 

He expects Tony to argue, or at least to frown and throw up his hands, but instead, he nods at him. “Lemme evict Teddy’s friends and make sure Amy’s ignorant to your presence, but then, sure,” he says, and Bruce finally releases the breath he’s spent the last several seconds holding.

Tony retreats upstairs, presumably in an attempt to calm himself down before the interview actually starts, and Bruce smiles apologetically as he loads the teens down with sodas, chips, and every other bit of consolatory junk food available. “Sorry,” Kate mumbles when he hands her a plastic grocery sack, her eyes still averted. “I just figured it was Cassie, so why the hell not open the door, you know?”

“Someone had to open it,” Bruce assures her. When he touches her arm, she twitches a little before she relaxes and casts him one bright-eyed glance. “It’ll be okay.”

“Our shared experience with those two ass—”

“America,” Kate warns sharply.

America rolls her eyes. She’s still wearing her tiny shorts, but with a thick blue-and-white striped sweater for a top. She flips the hood up over her curls and steals the grocery bag from her friend. “Like I was saying,” she says to Bruce, “our shared experience with those two _officers_ suggests that ‘okay’ is maybe a relative term.”

Bruce snorts a little. “It’s always a relative term,” he replies, and she huffs a breath at him before she stomps toward the front door. 

Kate shoots Bruce one last worried glance before following her out. Billy lingers at the breakfast nook, fastidiously sorting the Monopoly money back into the tray. He keeps his head down until Teddy touches his shoulder; then, he jerks hard enough that he almost spills the paper money all over the floor.

Teddy plants a hand on the tray to keep it from falling. When their eyes meet, Bruce can’t tell which teen is drowning in the other’s gaze. “Just go,” Teddy murmurs. Billy dips his head, and Teddy follows his eyes, shaking out his blond hair. “Nothing’s going to happen, and you know Kate’ll get fed up waiting for you and—”

“Lots of things could happen,” Billy cuts in. There’s fear in his voice, fear that shakes each of the words. Teddy flicks his eyes over to where Bruce hovers near the island, and Billy curls his hands into fists against the table. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice almost a whisper, “but after all the stuff we went through with Kate, and America before that, I just—”

“I’m not the girls,” Teddy interrupts. The hand on Billy’s shoulder slides down to his back, his fingers splaying out over the base of Billy’s spine. Bruce glances away, allowing them a moment of privacy as he fishes clean mugs out of the cabinet. “We’ve talked a lot about this,” Teddy continues, words that are barely audible to Bruce’s straining ears, “and like I said before . . . ”

He keeps talking, but in a murmur that’s too low for Bruce to hear, and he forces himself to ignore them both as he fills two coffee cups for the detectives. The murmuring lapses into silence, then into a sigh, and when Bruce looks over his shoulder, he catches Teddy and Billy kissing like two tragic lovers, Billy’s hand in Teddy’s hair as they cling to one another.

He ducks his head to hide his tiny smile and carries the coffee out into the living room. Howlett’s standing by the back door and watching the cold wind blow the last few fall leaves across the back yard while Munroe admires Tony’s ridiculous DVD collection. “It’ll just be another minute,” Bruce informs them as he settles the mugs on the table.

Munroe nods without looking at him, but Howlett snorts. “Might depend on your definition of minute,” he comments, and Bruce follows his eyes into the kitchen to find Billy and Teddy hugging each other with a single-minded desperation.

By the time Tony trails down the steps, his face set in the kind of frown usually saved for wartime, Billy’s gone, leaving behind a messy-haired, helpless Teddy. Teddy attempts to fix the first problem by dragging fingers through his thick mop of hair, but the second still remains, and he slinks into the living room like a man on death row. The couch creaks as he settles onto the very edge of the cushion, his elbows on his thighs and his hands folded between his knees; the chairs on either side shift as Howlett and Munroe each lower into one. Bruce hovers behind the couch, feeling distinctly like an uninvited spectator in his own life. 

Tony, however, walks right into the fray and tosses himself into the corner of the couch. He kicks his feet up onto the coffee table as though he owns it—which, technically, is true—and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re here as our guests until you’re _not_ ,” he tells the detectives. “And if that doesn’t tell you how short your leash is, then I’ll drag out a tape measure and show you.”

Bruce rolls his lips together, but Tony’s aggression actually helps the line of his shoulders soften. He leans his arms on the back of the couch and watches as Munroe shakes her head. “Mr. Stark—”

“He’s got a point, ‘Ro,” Howlett cuts in. Her sharp eyes immediately flick in his direction, but he shrugs his wide shoulders. “We’re their guests and we’re here for a conversation. If they want to kick us out, they can.”

“And leave us to have this conversation somewhere else?” Munroe retorts.

“Yeah, see, here’s the thing,” Tony jumps in, one hand lifting from his arm to gesture idly. “If you wanted to have this conversation somewhere else, you’d have it there. At Teddy’s school, at the precinct, in the juvenile justice system’s own personal naughty corner, whatever.” Teddy snorts quietly at that, his lips twitching into a tiny smile, and Tony drops his hand. “You want to talk to him here, you talk to him, but only until the mister or I decide that playtime’s over.”

Munroe’s jaw tightens. “Fine,” she agrees, but Bruce hears the distaste that’s flooded into her tone. She sips her coffee for a moment before she finally glances over at Teddy. “We’ve spent a lot of time on this case in the last couple weeks,” she says to him, and for the first time that night, she sounds almost soothing. Teddy purses his lips, but he nods at her, and she offers him a small smile. “But the problem is that we’re really struggling to put together a coherent timeline of events. We have the order things happened in, but no actual times. Only rough estimates.” She shrugs slightly, and on the couch, Teddy shifts. “We talked to Amy, but she can’t really remember what time things happened.”

Tony snorts and rolls his eyes. “Because she’s a traumatized seven-year-old who can barely read a digital clock,” he mutters, and for once, Bruce can’t disagree.

Munroe tightens her grip on her coffee mug. “That’s probably true,” she admits, and the tension in Tony’s shoulders unwinds slightly. “We thought you might be able to clear some of it up for us.”

Teddy unfolds his hands to rub his neck. “I’m not sure I can really help that much,” he says after a couple seconds. Munroe raises an eyebrow, and he shakes his head. “I mean, I remember putting Amy to bed and turning on the movie, but I have no idea when I fell asleep or when the fire started. It’s pretty jumbled in my head.”

“Well, maybe we can break it down,” Munroe suggests. When Teddy nods unevenly, she sets down her coffee mug and pulls her notebook out of her back pocket. She flips through dozens of full or almost-full pages before she lands on the one she wants. “You said you and Ed put Amy to bed around nine-thirty, right?”

“That’s when we left her, sure,” Teddy replies. 

“And did you go straight down to watch the movie, or did you try going to bed first?”

Teddy worries his lower lip, and for a moment, Bruce can’t tell if he’s struggling with his memory or with something else entirely. He studies the ceiling for a few seconds before he answers, “I think I probably tried to sleep. I mean, I usually do.”

Munroe nods. “How long did you stay in bed, then?”

The teen shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

“Can you estimate?” she presses. She gestures a little with the notebook, almost as though she’s encouraging him into an answer. “A half hour? Forty-five minutes? An hour?”

“Maybe closer to forty-five minutes?” Teddy guesses. Munroe releases a little sound of assent as she flips back through her notebook, and he shifts again. “Ed was still closing up the house when I came down, so it couldn’t’ve been too late.”

“Exactly the kind of information we’re looking for,” Howlett chimes in, and Bruce bodily jerks in his direction. He’d almost forgotten about the other detective, but now he realizes that Howlett’s scribbling down Teddy’s responses in an almost comically small notebook. He points his pen at Munroe. “She thought you probably headed straight down, but I said, nah, you usually try to crash out before heading down. That’s the way insomnia works.”

“I’ve seen you fall asleep in a chair three minutes after sitting down,” Munroe reminds him.

He waves her off, his attention returning to Teddy. He smiles, his face surprisingly warm for a detective known for his overwhelming gruffness. Teddy smiles back, but Bruce feels his pulse quicken. Worse, Tony—still sprawled out on the couch, arms across his chest—frowns until his brow furrows. “So, lemme ask you this,” Howlett continues. “Where in the movie’d you fall asleep?”

Teddy blinks. “What?”

“I told a buddy you were watching _Inception_ , and he made me watch it all over again.” Munroe snorts at that as she reaches for her coffee, but Howlett ignores her. “Assuming you headed downstairs and got the movie going by ten-thirty, we can probably figure out when you nodded off by the last thing you remembered watching.”

“And from there,” Munroe tags on, “we can narrow down when the fire started.”

“You don’t know?” Teddy asks. He sounds cautious, the words almost choking him, and Munroe cocks her head slightly to one side. He drags fingers through his hair. “Sorry,” he says, “I just figured, with technology and everything—”

“We can narrow it down, but it’s not a perfect science,” Howlett answers with a shrug. Teddy nods unevenly and glances down at his hands as they dangle between his knees. “Best they can guess, it started anywhere between maybe ten and twelve-thirty, since your call to 911 came in just before one a.m.”

“But the longer you were awake, the less likely it started then,” Munroe adds in.

Howlett jerks his head in her direction. “What she said. Which is why knowing where you were in the movie when you fell asleep is important.” He raises his eyebrows at Teddy, but Teddy just ducks his head further. “Teddy?”

“I don’t really remember,” Teddy says quietly. Howlett releases a disbelieving snort, but before either Bruce or Tony can object—and Tony’s about to, Bruce can read it on every inch of his body—Teddy jerks his head up and glares right at the detective. “I was texting my friends, not really paying attention to the movie. And since I’ve seen it a hundred times, and with everything else that happened that night—” The words catch, and he quickly shakes his head. “It’s all a blur.”

“Do your friends have curfews?” Munroe asks. There’s no pause in the questioning, no chance for Teddy to regain his footing, and Bruce feels his stomach swim. On the couch, Tony swings his legs down onto the floor, his body still taut and tense. For his part, Teddy just blinks. “A lot of parents cut off phone use at a certain time of night,” Munroe clarifies with a one-shouldered shrug. “If you know when they said good night, then—”

“Kate’s dad barely knows where she is, never mind when she’s using her cell phone,” Teddy responds. His tone is just flinty enough that Munroe’s open, friendly expression starts to waver. The teen shakes his head. “Billy’s parents mostly believe in letting him set his own reasonable boundaries.”

Howlett snorts. “He’s sixteen.”

“They’re psychologists,” Teddy snaps back. For a single beat, Howlett looks surprised—surprised and impressed, Bruce thinks—but Teddy just sighs and runs his fingers through his hair for what feels like the hundredth time. “If I’d known this was going to be important,” he says after a few more seconds, “I would’ve kept track of everything, but it just seemed like a normal night. I did everything like I always did.”

“And if Amy said things were different that night?” 

There’s an abrupt change in Howlett’s tone, something darker and sharper, and Teddy twists in his direction like he’s searching for something that’s stung him. Tony’s whole body tightens visibly, and Bruce feels his stomach clench. For the first time since Principal Behrens called him to the elementary school, the cold hand of worry is squeezing his chest.

Worse, Teddy’s face is completely unreadable, a blank mask of surprise rather than fear—or, Bruce supposes, of guilt and dishonesty.

“Amy wouldn’t say that,” Teddy finally replies, his hands curling into fists on his legs. “She knows she’s not supposed to lie.”

“Except Amy told us there was an argument that night.” Munroe tilts forward on her chair, her whole body poised like a sleek jungle cat readying herself for the attack. Teddy glances away, and she raises her eyebrows. “She said someone took some of Mrs. Pierpont’s belongings out of the bedroom, and that they thought it might be her.”

Teddy shifts his weight around on the couch, his hands clenching until he’s nearly white-knuckled. When he lifts his head to glance between the two detectives, his eyes are wide. Panicky, Bruce thinks without realizing it, and he feels something acidic rise in the back of his throat. Tony’s jaw works, tightening as he swallows, but Teddy just releases a long huff of breath. “That’s not exactly what happened,” he starts to say, “but—”

“She said you stood up for her,” Howlett presses, and Teddy clamps his lips shut. “Said that things got a little heated, because you didn’t like how they were talking to her.”

Teddy shakes his head. “That’s not—”

“That you helped put her to bed,” Munroe chimes in, “but that Ed was still upset with you, and—” 

“Are you even going to listen to me, or are you just going to keep _telling_ me what happened that night?” Teddy’s voice bursts through the room, deep enough and loud enough to echo off the walls and ceilings, and before Bruce can really react, the boy’s on his feet. His whole body’s tense and tight, belonging more to a prize-fighter than an upset teen, and his arms tremble as he holds his hands in fists. His face transforms into a mask of anger and something darker—hurt, Bruce thinks, or maybe fear—and Bruce—

Bruce knows that anger. He knows it like he knows the scent of Tony’s cologne and Miles’s shampoo—like his own fingerprints, or like the smell of the sky before rain—and he fears it. He’s always feared it, always fought against it, and now it’s bursting to life in front of him, coursing through Teddy like electricity or a flame.

“Teddy,” Tony says quietly, but there’s shock plain on his face and in his voice. For the first time, Bruce thinks maybe his husband’s never before seen someone so young and angry.

He’s not sure whether Teddy hears Tony or not, because he’s shaking his head again, a jerky, half-uncontrolled motion. “Yeah,” he says finally, “somebody got into Sylvie’s jewelry box, and maybe it was Amy. I don’t know. But the fight? It lasted like _five_ minutes.” He throws up his hands. “Amy’s a little kid who hates when people are mad at each other, but that doesn’t mean— What she said, it isn’t—” The words tremble, his hands and shoulders immediately following suit, and he ends up scrubbing a palm over his face before he stares back down at the floor. “I hate that we fought that night, because it was stupid and petty, but that doesn’t mean we—”

“ _And_ we’re done here,” Tony immediately breaks in, the words crashing over the sound of Teddy’s suddenly labored breathing like a wave against a rock face. Teddy nods stiffly and immediately turns away from the detectives, heading for his room without a single backward glance. Bruce knows, deep down, that he should worry more about Tony than Teddy—even now, he hears the heat in Munroe’s response, and the thinly veiled _disgust_ in Tony’s comeback—but he can’t help track Teddy’s every step. By the time he’s through to the kitchen, the anger’s slipped out of his posture enough that his shoulders jump and shake; by the time he closes the door to the guest room, Bruce is halfway certain that he’s crying.

“I’d think you’d rather us talk to him here than at the station,” Bruce hears Munroe saying as he finally spins back around. She’s standing face-to-face with Tony, her shoulders square and her jaw set. Tony snorts at her, and she raises a finger as though she plans to jab him in the chest. “I get calls about my decision to talk to Amy at school, but when I pay you the courtesy of talking to Teddy here, you—”

“Okay, we _really_ need to talk about your definition of courtesy if you think _that_ qualified as—”

“Go.”

Bruce hears more than feels the word spring from his lips, and suddenly, all three other people in his living room are staring at him. Tony smirks while the two detectives scowl. “I don’t care how important it is that you talk to Teddy,” Bruce says, “or how much you might want to know about his argument with Ed and Sylvia. You can’t come into our house and talk to him like that.”

Munroe sighs. “Dr. Banner—” 

“You _can’t_ ,” Bruce repeats, shaking his head. “Maybe with other foster parents in other cases, but not here. Not with us.”

Munroe’s jaw twitches, a sure sign that she’s resisting an overwhelming urge to roll her eyes, and for a split second, Bruce steels himself for another argument. Instead, Howlett places a big hand on his partner’s shoulder, leaving her to whirl on her heel and glare at him. He shrugs. “Let’s go.”

“Logan—”

“It’s still their house, ‘Ro,” he reminds her, and she flicks her angry glare in Bruce and Tony’s direction. “Still their rules.”

She huffs a bitter, angry breath at Howlett before she twists away and stalks out of the house, her heeled boots echoing on the tile floor. Howlett shakes his head in a silent apology (or something like it) before he follows. The door slams heavily behind them, leaving the house still and quiet in their wake.

Finally, though, Tony exhales. “You don’t think—” he starts to say, but he stops when he meets Bruce’s eyes. He rolls his lips together, nearly embarrassed, and Bruce—

Bruce scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I think,” he admits, and despite his best efforts, he finds himself staring back over his shoulder at the guest room door. “But I’m worried.”

 

==

 

“What do you mean, ‘no matter what’? Is something going to _happen_?”

Miles’s question—a harsh, rushed near-whisper—echoes across the upstairs hallway, and Teddy immediately hushes him with an equally harsh hiss of breath. It’s almost midnight, past the reasonable bedtimes of both teenagers and their parents. Bruce’d only crawled out of bed to wander downstairs and find his book; he’d assumed all three kids were sleeping peacefully until, halfway up the stairs, he’d heard voices.

Teddy’d pretty much closed himself in his bedroom after his conversation with the detectives, and when Bruce and Tony’d finally knocked lightly on the door a good half-hour later, they’d found him sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at his hands. They’d stood in helpless, dumbstruck silence before Teddy’d said anything, and his voice’d trembled as he’d walked through the argument with Ed and Sylvia Pierpont on the night of the fire.

“It was just stupid arguing, just me trying to stick up for Amy because they were _so_ sure she took that necklace,” he’d finally explained, shaking his head. By that time, Bruce and Tony’d both migrated into the room, Bruce hovering by the desk while Tony—never a fan of respecting someone’s personal space—had perched himself next to Teddy on the edge of the bed. Teddy’d glanced over at him first, then at Bruce, his face open and painfully sad, and Bruce’d pressed a hand to the desk in order to resist his urge to bundle the sixteen-year-old up in a hug. “I knew Ed was still pretty mad at me afterward—Sylvie understood, but Ed, he hated it when anybody got too sharp with Sylvie or Tristan. I just figured I’d be able to make it up to him in the morning.” He’d snorted. “Look how that turned out.”

Tony’d smiled and, very carefully, looped an arm around Teddy’s broad shoulders. “Sometimes, kiddo, life shits on us that way,” he’d said, and Teddy’d actually offered him a tiny grin before he’d leaned into the embrace.

They’d left Teddy to sleep, after that—“I just really want to crash,” he’d said, and Tony’d ruffled his messy blond hair before releasing him—and gone about the rest of their evening routine: shooing Amy into bed, driving Ganke back home to his mom’s, sending the dogs out for one last, frigid bathroom break. The dogs are sprawled out on their ridiculous dog beds in “their room” (a place for dog kennels, dog beds, and Jarvis’s seven-foot cat tree of doom) now, Jarvis is curled up at the foot of Amy’s bed like her personal fuzzy guardian, and Miles— Well, Miles is _meant_ to be asleep, but then, so is Teddy.

There’s a long pause in the conversation, long enough that Bruce assumes it’s over, but then, Teddy releases a long, soft sigh. “Nothing’s happening, and I hope it stays that way,” he says, and Bruce can hear the way every word trembles with the smallest hint of worry. “But I need to know that you’re there for her. Amy’s not like your cousin. She’s scared of everything, and she’s shy, too. She needs somebody to look out for her. Me, you, your dads . . . ” He pauses for a second, allowing the silence to sweep into the hallway and down the stairs. “And she especially needs you if I can’t be there.”

“But why _wouldn’t_ you be there?” Miles demands, louder this time. 

“Just trust me on this, okay?”

“Teddy—”

“Please, Miles?”

Bruce hears Miles sigh as he carefully climbs the last few steps, aware the whole time that one false step might end the teens’ conversation once and for all. At the top of the stairs, he discovers that Miles’s bedroom door is only about a third of the way open, and that Teddy’s standing just inside the doorway, his shadow stretching out down the hallway. 

Finally, Miles releases a frustrated noise. “Teddy, if something’s wrong, we should tell my dads. Like, I know they’re crazy, but they can help if something’s—”

“There’s nothing to tell them,” Teddy interrupts harshly. Miles immediately falls silent, and Bruce watches as Teddy’s shoulders slump. “I wish I could explain all of this to you,” he says after a couple more seconds, “but I can’t. I just need you to promise me you’ll help Amy if she needs it. Okay?”

Miles stays quiet for several long, tense seconds before he answers, “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Teddy replies, and Bruce quickly ducks back into the master bedroom before he can be spotted—and before he can hear anything more.

The next morning, at the breakfast nook, Bruce glances up from the newspaper and over at his groggy, half-awake son. Tony and Teddy are out in the Prius together, a makeshift driving lesson with a doughnut-related end goal; Amy, still clad in pajamas and with epic bedhead, had insisted on riding along. It leaves only Bruce and Miles in the house: Miles with a glass of orange juice and droopy eyes, and Bruce with the paper and coffee.

“You look tired,” he comments, and Miles jerks his head up. They stare at one another for a moment, Miles’s face as nervous as it is surprised, and Bruce shrugs as he reaches for his mug. “I know you stay up and read comic books sometimes,” he points out. “Ganke leave part of his collection for you?”

Miles snorts. “Like Ganke’d trust me with his _precious_ ,” he mutters, and Bruce can’t help but laugh a little. The chuckle hardly lasts, though, not when Miles drops his eyes back down to his glass. He spins it in an idle circle for a few seconds before he adds, “I couldn’t really fall asleep.”

“No?” Bruce asks.

“No,” his son answers, and sips his orange juice.

It’s another twenty minutes before Tony arrives home with doughnuts and foster children, crowing about Teddy’s over-cautious driving and the “color commentary” from peanut-gallery Amy.

And in that time, Miles drinks three cups of orange juice, reads the comics, starts the Saturday Sudoku—and never once mentions his conversation with Teddy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: next week, we're back to biweekly posts until November.


	12. Thorns and Arrows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Miles asks a number of important questions about the nature of justice as the investigation into the Pierpont fire leads to the worst possible conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know precious little about subpoenas, so this chapter is one of those places where I beg you to suspend your disbelief just a little bit.
> 
> Trigger warning for a brief but pointed reference to the domestic violence in Bruce's backstory (not directed at Bruce). General warnings for references to the Pierpont fire and other deaths.
> 
> And, of course, endless thanks to my betas, Jen and saranoh, who have dealt with this story's very weird completion-and-posting schedule with so much grace and aplomb.

“Can I ask you something?” Miles murmurs Sunday night.

They’re standing together in an empty field at the end of their subdivision, their faces tipped up to the sky while Dummy and Butterfingers race around them in long, lazy circles. Someday, Bruce knows, this lot’ll be just another miniature mansion with a circle drive and a swimming pool, but tonight, it belongs to him, Miles, and two hyperactive greyhounds. Butterfingers nips at Dummy’s heel and Dummy barks at him, the noise like a crack of thunder in the quiet, but the running never ceases. 

Bruce glances over at his son, unsurprised to find that he’s still studying the stars on this rare, cloudless November night. He’s shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his collar up against the wind, but there’s no hiding how tall and slender he is, how much of a future man is coiled inside his teenage body. Bruce’s heart aches a little when he imagines his son as a man, but then again, Bruce’s heart’s ached consistently for the last forty-eight hours.

He smiles anyway. “You can ask me anything,” he reminds the teen, and Miles nods a little as he stares up at beautiful, blue-black sky.

The reality of Teddy’s second interview—his “badgering” as Tony calls it, sneering every time—had slowly settled in over the course of Saturday, hovering over them like a thick, heavy storm cloud. Teddy’d forced a brave face for as long as possible—he’d played several rounds of Mouse Trap with Dot and Amy, joked and laughed with Miles, even helped Bruce with dinner—but by the end of the night, the façade’d finally faded away. He’d tucked himself into a corner of the couch and stared dully at the television as Amy’d insisted on her thousandth viewing of _Aladdin_ ; when the girl’d fallen asleep with her head in his lap, he’d insisted on carrying her off to bed in his room. “Just for tonight,” he’d said quietly, and Bruce’d pretended not to notice the way his voice’d stuttered. “After what happened with the detectives, I just don’t want to—”

“Hey,” Tony’d cut him off, and Teddy’d swallowed thickly as he’d glanced up at both of them. “You’re allowed to need her around as much as she needs you. It’s not a one-way street.”

“I know,” Teddy’d murmured, “I just—” 

But he’d shaken his head instead of finishing the sentence, and Tony’d ruffled his hair before helping him tuck Amy in.

Two hours later, she’d woken the whole house with another night terror, and he and Tony’d spent close to an hour in Teddy’s room with her, piecing her back together as she’d jerked herself out of her nightmare only to break down in horrible, wracking sobs.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to _do_ ,” Bruce’d said helplessly in the wee hours of Sunday morning, his fingers in his hair instead of clutched around his cup of tea. He’d planned on climbing into bed with Tony, on dragging him down onto the mattress and forgetting the last twenty-four hours, but Tony’d sat him down at the breakfast nook and put the kettle on, instead. The house’d felt oppressively quiet and dark as Tony’d brewed tea in the glow of their kitchen appliances, but then, he’d slid into the nook next to Bruce, backed him into the corner, and kissed him soft and slow until he’d remembered how to breathe properly.

Tony’d stroked odd patterns on his thigh as he’d run through all his frustrations: about the Pierpont investigation, about the interview, about Miles and Teddy’s secret conversation, about his own helplessness. 

When he’d finished, Tony’d rolled his lips together before he’d said, “Then we rally the troops.”

Bruce’d resisted his urge to sigh. “Tony—”

“Hey, no, not in a morally dubious kind of way,” Tony’d immediately cut in, and he’d raised both his hands as Bruce’d shaken his head and reached for his mug. “But we’ve been playing this us-against-the-world since everything kicked off—against the cops, against the investigation, against Fury’s screwed-up compartmentalization kink—and maybe it’s time we circled the wagons.” He’d paused, his brow furrowing. “Is ‘circling the wagons’ racially insensitive? Because I think it’s maybe got something to do with cowboys-and-Indians, and as much as our field likes to throw around the word ‘Indian’ instead of ‘indigenous peoples—’”

Despite his better instincts, Bruce’d felt himself smile. “Rhodey sent you another ‘cultural sensitivity for dummies’ e-mail?” he’d asked.

“Two, actually, but that’s neither here nor there.” Bruce’d chuckled into his coffee mug, and his shoulders’d instantly loosened a few degrees. Next to him, Tony’d offered up one of his gorgeously warm smiles. “You’re friends with pretty much every social worker this side of the Mississippi, aside from the one who cried on the witness stand,” Tony’d continued, waving off Bruce’s annoyed little glance, “and there are several boots-on-the-ground Suffolk County police officers who don’t _entirely_ hate my guts.”

“Since when?”

“Since some splinter cell organization under one of the charities with my mom’s name on it helped with some fundraising drive a couple years back, but _that_ is not the point.” Bruce’d rolled his eyes, and Tony’d promptly stolen his tea. “My point is, we can stick our noses in the right places, and if we do? We might find out something besides ‘the investigation is ongoing and top secret.’”

Bruce’d pressed his lips together for a long moment, watching as Tony’d helped himself to a long drag from his mug—and then, as he’d nudged it right back into Bruce’s open palms. Bruce’d curled his fingers around it before he’d said, “It’s a conflict of interest.” Tony’d frowned at him, his face crinkling, and Bruce’d shaken his head. “We’re not supposed to touch the Pierpont case with a hundred-foot pole, not when Teddy and Amy are in our home. We’d taint the case.”

Tony’d shrugged. “Two assistant district attorneys throwing their weight around to figure out what’s happening to their foster kids, yeah, that’d look bad,” he’d admitted, the absolute sincerity clear in his tone. But he’d held Bruce’s eyes when he’d said it, his face open and _determined_ , and in that second, Bruce’d fallen completely under his spell for the hundredth time. “But two pillars of the community looking out for their foster kids because the smoke and mirrors are thicker than the fog in a river valley? _That_ only hurts the people who’d dare lie to us.”

Bruce’d snorted. “Life’s not an episode of _Murder, She Wrote_ , Tony.”

“Says the man with mysterious second-cousins all over the western seaboard,” Tony’d retorted, and Bruce’d finally laughed as he’d finished his tea.

They’re waiting for calls back, now—from Jessica, from a handful of the other officers who’d helped out in the early stages of the Pierpont investigation, from one of the Pierponts’ old neighbors (a former schoolteacher and current member of the Urban Ascent board). After a long day of jumping at every text message and e-mail chime, Bruce’d abandoned his phone on the bedside table and walked out here, into the silence, with Miles and the dogs.

Miles draws in a long, unsteady breath, and when he exhales, a cloud rises around him. He shifts his weight uncomfortably, his hands digging more deeply in his pockets even as he stares resolutely at the night sky. Bruce purses his lips, bracing himself for an impossible blow: about school, about friendship, about relationships, about race.

Instead, Miles asks, “Can you go all the way to jail for something you didn’t do?”

The question blindsides Bruce, an uppercut when he expected a gut-punch, and when he blinks away the shock, he finds his son staring at him. Miles’s thoughtful eyes flicker across his expression, obviously reading Bruce’s surprise, and Bruce watches as he worries his lips together. 

“Getting arrested for something you didn’t do, I get that,” Miles admits. “Cops screw up all the time. And I know people go to trial for things they didn’t do, for pretty much the same reason.” He shrugs slightly. “But a jury finding you guilty, and you ending up all the way in jail— If you’re innocent, like _totally_ innocent, you can’t go, right? The judge can tell the jury they were wrong and just let you out.”

A breeze sweeps across the empty lot, and before Bruce knows it, Dummy and Butterfingers are rushing toward them, a perfect, paired distraction. Butterfingers’s back legs are somehow coated in mud, and Dummy—

“I’m glad we keep you updated on your shots,” Bruce informs the dog as he drops an ancient, muddy tennis ball at Miles’s feet.

Miles rolls his eyes. “You’re even a dad to the dogs,” he complains, but even he grimaces when he picks up the ball and hefts it back across the field.

Once the dogs disappear, their tags tinkling in the otherwise quiet night, Bruce sighs and drags his fingers through his hair. “The last part of your question—about judges overriding the jury—that’s mostly true,” he explains. Something like relief flashes across Miles’s expression, his posture loosening, and Bruce ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach as he shrugs slightly. “If there’s not enough evidence to legally convict someone, the judge can tell the jury that, and he can overturn a guilty verdict. But that’s not—” The words stick in his throat, and he shakes his head briefly, an attempt to rattle them loose. “But that’s not a guarantee that an innocent person won’t be falsely convicted.”

Miles frowns and digs his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “No?”

“No. It’s just— It’s not that simple.” Bruce tips his head back up to the sky, but he knows without glancing over that Miles is still staring at him, studying him as though he’s a yet-undiscovered constellation. He draws in a deep breath, the cold air crystallizing in his lungs; when he closes his eyes, he swears he can still pick out all the stars. 

“Police officers, witnesses, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries— They’re all human. They make honest mistakes, or they let their prejudices overwhelm their logic, or they’re led astray by a good story, and—” He sighs and glances down at his son. “Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, innocent people get snared in the middle of all that.”

Miles rolls his lips together. “Even if they swear they’re innocent?”

Bruce smiles slightly, a rueful chuckle nearly burbling up from the back of his throat. “Even then,” he replies, and Miles nods unevenly. He shrinks smaller, his shoulders hunching inside his coat, and Bruce leans over enough to brush their arms together. “I’m not going to lie to you, tell you it’s rare that an innocent person ends up in jail for someone else’s crime. It happens more often than we maybe even realize. But I can tell you that Tony and I, we work really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.” He forces another, stronger smile. “Our whole office does.”

Miles snorts softly. “I don’t think it makes it better for the family who’s got somebody in jail, though,” he murmurs. 

“Probably not, no.”

They spend another fifteen minutes or so out in the empty lot after that, their conversation shifting into a subdued discussion about constellations and star names, and Miles only smiles again when Dummy trots back up with the disgusting tennis ball. He carries it home, proudly prancing at Miles’s side while Butterfingers trips Bruce with his leash a half-dozen times. When they arrive back at the house, there’s a familiar white sedan in the circle drive.

Bruce hands Butterfingers’s least over to his son. “Wipe him down before he comes in,” he instructs.

Miles frowns, his eyes flicking between Bruce and the car. “Isn’t that—”

“Jessica Jones’s car, yeah,” Bruce finishes, and Miles nods a little before he leads the dogs around to the side gate.

Voices trickle in from the living room as Bruce toes off his shoes and hangs up his jacket, and he forces himself to draw in a deep breath before he leaves the foyer. Jessica’s texted him a half-dozen times over the course of the day, tiny updates in her own investigation-within-the-investigation— _meta-investigation_ , she’d joked at one point, and Bruce’d rolled his eyes. When she’d gone radio silent just before dinner time, he’d steeled himself for an e-mail or a phone call. He’s not sure the visit’s a good sign.

But when he finally walks into the living room, he finds Tony sprawled across the couch with a cup of coffee and his iPad while Jessica sits on the floor with Amy in her lap. Amy’s talking endlessly about her (miraculously still living) fish as Jessica—

“Are you braiding her hair?” Bruce asks, blinking.

“She’s giving me _pigtail_ braids,” Amy reports. She twists her head to grin up at Bruce, and Jessica leans forward to keep from pulling her hair. Because it’s still halfway damp from her shower, it hangs long and wavy, and Jessica expertly smoothes each section before she twists it into the braid. “Dot has pigtail braids, and Tony says braids are too hard.”

“So he made Jessica do them?” Bruce asks.

“If you mean ‘she totally volunteered to do it,’ then yes, I absolutely forced her into hair-braiding.” Tony raises his coffee mug to Bruce in a silent offer, and Bruce shakes his head. “Next, she’s scrubbing the bathroom floor, Cinderella-style.”

Jessica rolls her eyes. “We were waiting for you,” she explains with a shrug, “and you know what they say about idle hands.”

“That’s a song from _The Sound of Music_ ,” Amy comments offhandedly. Jessica swallows a surprised bark of laughter in what sounds to be a painful, full-body snort, and Amy wriggles around just far enough to glare at her. “Billy showed me _The Sound of Music_ , and it has a song all about idle hands.”

“Technically, it’s ‘Edelweiss,’” Tony corrects, “but I like your version a whole lot better.”

Amy wrinkles her nose at him, ready to argue, but Jessica lightly tugs at her pigtail until she settles back into her lap and stops wiggling around. By the time Bruce’s stepped into the kitchen to brew a cup of tea, Miles’s wiped the dogs down and brought them back into the house. He and Jessica talk for a few minutes until the braids are finished; then, without prompting, Miles holds out a hand to Amy.

Amy frowns at him. “What?”

“My dads need to talk to Jessica, so we’re going to go read or something.”

For a few seconds, the girl regards him coolly, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed into a tight, nearly argumentative line. Bruce half expects her to argue—after last night’s rough, interrupted sleep, she’s spent the day snappish and reluctant—but Miles just raises his eyebrows at her. “They’re going to make you come up by yourself if you don’t come with me,” he points out.

She sighs. “Fine,” she grumbles, but she hugs Jessica around the neck before she stomps off upstairs in front of Miles. He at least waits until she’s out of earshot to sigh and roll his eyes.

“You’re our all-time number-one favorite son, you know,” Tony remarks as Miles starts to follow after Amy’s sulky, stomping footsteps.

“I’m your only son,” Miles reminds him, and he grins at Tony’s unnecessary, overblown wink. 

Jessica stays on the floor even after the kids are gone, her back slumping against the front of one of the oversized chairs as she picks up the House Targaryen coffee mug and cradles it between her palms. “We need to be worried about a Teddy sighting?”

Tony shakes his head. “He’s got an English paper due tomorrow, and last I checked, he’s two paragraphs in and hating his whole life. We’re good.”

“Good,” she echoes, nodding down into her coffee cup. She’s silent for a long moment, maybe too long, and Bruce’s nerves crackle and pop until he feels like an impatient toddler, ready to fidget and fuss at the uncomfortable quiet. Tony must struggle with the same urge, too, because he stretches his feet out just far enough to dig his toes under Bruce’s thigh. He’s tapping a rhythm along the side of his own mug when, finally, Jessica sighs. “You want the good news, or the bad news?”

“Depends on whether the good news is better than the bad news,” Tony immediately answers. 

“They’re about even.”

“Then start with the bad,” Bruce replies. She lifts her eyes up from the inky surface of her coffee, and he shrugs. “Even if they won’t cancel each other out, it’d be better to save the best for last.”

“I think ‘best’ might be overselling it,” Jessica retorts, but then she’s scratching a hand through her long hair. “I spent all morning playing phone tag with Kurt, only for him to call me about an hour ago and tell me it’s all, and I quote here, ‘above his pay grade.’” Tony rolls his eyes, his face instantly a mask of disdain, and Jessica barely staves off the coming rant by raising a hand in his direction. “Trust me, I _know_. Because apologetic as he was, he mostly implied that he might tell me if he wasn’t afraid of Howlett putting his balls in a vise for it.”

Tony snorts darkly. “Howlett’s probably into that sort of shit,” he grumbles. Bruce glances over at him, not so much a warning as an attempt to read the emotions _under_ his frustration, but Tony just shakes his head. “It’s great to know that those assholes don’t care about who they’re hurting while they’re on their, I don’t know, campaign of terror and bullshit. Fills me to the brim with hope and joy, you know?”

“Yes,” Jessica replies, “and I pretty much told him—in no uncertain terms—that he was being a dick.” She drops her hand back into her lap. “For what it’s worth, I think he felt bad, just not bad enough to blurt state secrets.”

“State secrets that not even the prosecutor’s office knows,” Tony immediately replies. Bruce rolls his lips together, but Tony huffs a breath as he scrubs a hand over his goatee. “You know that’s the state of affairs here, right?” he asks Jessica. “Because no matter how many times I make an ‘I’m asking as your kid’s godfather, not as your coworker down the hall’ call to Steve, I get the same exact response: there’s no charges, there’s no warrant, there’s no sign that the cops know _what_ is going on.”

“I know,” Jessica says quietly.

“And yet there’s a social worker collecting secrets like Beanie Babies while the rest of us are stuck here with our thumbs up our a—”

“I _know_.” There’s something sharp and icy in Jessica’s tone, and in a rare bolt of self-preservation, Tony clamps his lips shut. She sighs once he’s quiet, her eyes drifting back down to her coffee mug, and Bruce swallows around the uncomfortable churning feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Kate Bishop came to me after group therapy on Thursday and said Kurt and Howlett interviewed her at school for a second time,” she explains, shaking her head. “She didn’t think it was a big deal—they mostly just wanted to revisit the timeline from that night, and Teddy’s always admitted to texting her and Billy—but Kurt never mentioned it.” When she glances back up, she focuses all her attention—and all her bare-faced worry—on Bruce. “He knows she’s in my therapy group. Hell, he recommended her to my therapy group. Common courtesy said he should’ve told me.”

Bruce wets his lips. “But he didn’t.”

“No. Which is why I took matters into my own hands and called in a different kind of favor.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow at that, but on the other end of the couch, Tony snorts and reaches for his coffee. “What’s a seedy social work favor look like? Exchanging back-alley best practices for a packet of free post-it notes? Swapping one depressing case file for another, slightly less depressing case file and a chocolate bar?”

Jessica rolls her eyes. “In my case, it looks like talking to my husband.”

Bruce nearly smiles behind the lip of his coffee mug, but Tony’s whole face creases into a dark frown. “Your husband as in Luke Cage?” he asks. When Jessica shrugs instead of answering aloud, he scoffs. “Because I believe that the three-hundred-pound walking wall of muscle and terror who owns a bar is really going to be helpful in the present situation. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“An ordinary ‘wall of muscle and terror’ might not be helpful, but Luke’s a special case,” Jessica reminds him. Tony wrinkles his nose in disbelief, and she frowns. “Tony, you know he used to be a cop, right? That his bar caters almost entirely to members of the force and their friends?”

Tony freezes for a moment, his mug halfway to his mouth as surprise flickers across his expression. He narrows his eyes at Jessica suspiciously as he presses his lips into a tight line. “I did not know about this,” he admits finally, and next to him, Bruce rolls his eyes. “Wait, did _you_ know about this? Is this another unfortunate marital secret that you kept from me, the fact that we know a former member of Union County law enforcement?”

“Technically, _you_ don’t know him,” Bruce returns, and Tony digs a toe into the underside of his thigh until he smacks at his foot. “And if you’re only asking because you’re still upset about your Union County speeding ticket—”

“A fact I can neither confirm nor deny,” Tony cuts in.

“—then I am telling you I had no idea that Luke used to be a cop. It is completely news to me.”

There’s a smile kicking at the corner of Tony’s mouth even as he pulls one of his best _betrayed_ faces. On the floor, Jessica sighs at the both of them. “You’re worse than Kate and Eli with the flirting and the banter,” she criticizes, and Bruce almost chokes on his tea when he laughs. For a split second, he thinks she might smile, but then, a stony mask of seriousness crosses her face. 

She sets her coffee mug on the floor to worry her hands together. “Luke knows a lot of people who know a lot more people,” she explains after a few more seconds, “and since he’s practically a boy scout with a heart of gold, they trust him. Maybe too much, but apparently when you say that about your husband’s virtue, you’re a bad wife.”

“Bruce says the very same thing,” Tony comments, and he jumps a little when Bruce lightly pinches his ankle.

Jessica chuckles at that, albeit briefly, and tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. “Apparently, even the Union County guys can’t stop talking about the fire,” she says finally. “The way Luke tells it, it sounds like the police are closing in on an arrest. One gal, Rachel—she worked with Munroe for a while before she switched counties, maybe even went up through the academy around the same time—told him that Munroe’s like a dog with a scent on this one.” Her mouth twists into a rueful little grin. “I liked half the idiom.”

Bruce nods distractedly, his thumb stroking along the handle of his mug as he tries to process all this new information—interviews with Teddy’s friends, evasive answers, Munroe as an animal hunting prey—but it’s Tony who finally draws in a long, half-shaky breath. When Bruce glances over, he finds his husband scrubbing a hand through his already messy hair. He looks lost, Bruce realizes, his eyes wide and worried as he presses his lips together only to sigh a second later.

He looks, Bruce thinks, like a man who’s spent just as much time and energy _scared_ as Bruce has.

“So, the only option’s to wait, then?” he asks, and he rolls his eyes when Jessica ducks her head away in lieu of an answer. “I mean, on the one hand, I _get_ it. I get that they can’t tell you what’s happening because you’re not one of _them_ —like we’re in elementary school playground cliques instead of the business of helping kids—and god forbid you be kept in the same loop. And I even understand why our titles as assistant district attorneys trumps whatever gut-churning hell we’re going through as parents.” He pauses for a moment, a beat that’s just long enough to shake his head, and Bruce discovers in the span of a breath that he can’t bring himself to correct Tony’s little misstatement. “But the thing I can’t understand,” he presses, “is that nobody outside of this room stops for more than ten minutes at a time to think about what this is doing to Teddy and Amy.”

“I know,” Jessica says. 

Tony snorts and swings his legs off the couch. “No offence, Jess, but you’re around once every ten days for happy cuddle times. You have _no_ idea what it’s doing to them.”

“Tony,” Bruce says quietly, but he knows from the flash of hurt in Tony’s eyes that this is one beehive he’s better off _not_ poking. He watches as his husband picks up the iPad and walks out of the room, and he’s not surprised to hear his footsteps on the stairs a moment later. 

Jessica thumps her head against the chair and sighs, her eyes drifting up to the ceiling. “He’s right,” she says.

Bruce shakes his head. “Last night was rough, and I think he’s still shaken,” he assures her. “Give him an hour, you’ll have five apologetic e-mails waiting—”

“No, he’s right about nobody caring,” she cuts him off, and he glances down at his hands as he rolls his lips together. Within another few seconds, Jessica’s sitting on the couch next to him, their knees almost bumping as she plants her elbows on her thighs. “Bruce, I’ve thought about this for weeks now, and the only conclusion I can come to is that they’re _not_ concerned about Teddy and Amy the way they should be.” He looks up at her just in time to watch her shake her head. For a moment, her expression’s distant, almost lost, but then she wets her lips. “I’ve worked cases where the kids are witnesses to a crime before,” she says, “and they treat those kids like they’re about to crumble. They’re careful. Fuck, they’re _gentle_.” She swallows before she glances over at him. “But I’ve seen other cases— Well. Let’s just say, there’s only one kind of kid they’re not careful with.”

Bruce’s heart sinks into his stomach, and for one, painful second, he thinks it might actually explode. “What kids are those?” he asks, even though he’s absolutely certain he knows the answer.

“Suspects,” Jessica replies, and proves him right. 

 

==

 

“Who the fuck is Michael Peterson and _why_ is his name on this subpoena?” Maria Hill demands on Tuesday morning.

Behind his desk, Fury sits stock-still and solemn, a statue carved from dark granite. He holds his head up high above his tight, unyielding shoulders, his jaw flexing. In that second, Bruce is reminded that as much as the man’s a friend and colleague, he’s also the district attorney, and a formidable one at that. He’s the man who helped bring Nathaniel Essex up on disciplinary charges, who’s stared down Loki Laufeyson in court without breaking a sweat, who’s never once backed down from a fight.

His chief assistant district attorney slaps a facsimile copy of the subpoena duces tecum—a records subpoena, one Bruce usually only sees when he needs medical records from the local hospital—down on Fury’s desk. 

Fury hardly blinks. “I can’t tell you too much about that,” he answers blandly.

“Like hell you can’t,” Maria sneers, and Fury’s jaw tightens.

At Bruce’s side, Tony draws in a sharp, bristling breath, his whole body tensing as though he’s bracing for an impact. Bruce grabs his arm, rougher than usual, and for a beat, they stare at each other. Layers of emotion race across Tony’s face, flickering like light in his dark eyes: anger, yes, but also surprise, worry, and fear.

 _Not this time_ , Bruce mouths. In eleven months of marriage and years of friendship, he’s never seriously cut off one of Tony’s rants, but here—

Here, he feels the crackle of energy in the air like the pressure before a thunderstorm, and he’d rather Tony not be caught up in the lightning.

Tony wets his lips, but he nods, too.

And on Bruce’s _other_ side, her ponytail bobbing, Jessica Jones crosses her arms over her windbreaker. “I’m not producing documents if I don’t know what’s going on,” she says sharply.

Fury snorts and leans back in his chair, his hands folding across his middle. “Under the law, Miss Jones, you don’t have a whole lot of choice in that,” he reminds her.

She glances away, but not before he fingers curl against her arms.

It’s a cold-but-bright November morning outside the big picture window in Fury’s office, and bright patches of sunlight stretch across the carpeting. The contrast’s almost ironic when you consider the oppressive silence that sweeps through the room, blanketing all of them as Fury’s eye observes them carefully. It’s the same silence that’d blanketed Bruce’s office when Jessica’d shown up that morning, her hunted expression startling him enough that he’d almost dropped his coffee cup, and it’s the silence that’d followed them both into Maria’s office.

“This is bad,” Maria’d said after she’d glanced over the packet of documents Jessica’d carried in from outside. “This is _insanely_ bad.”

Bruce’d almost chuckled, but the intent, nearly combative glance Maria’d tossed his way choked him, instead. “On what scale?” he’d asked as lightly as possible. 

She’d stood, her shoulders squaring. “Bring your husband to Fury’s office,” she’d instructed, and that’d answered a dozen of Bruce’s questions.

There are a thousand more questions, of course, questions that’d sat heavily in the back of Bruce’s throat Monday afternoon. He’d clutched a paper coffee cup between his palms, his fingers restless and shaky, and beside him, Tony’s leg had bounced hard enough that it almost jostled the table.

Sif Rowan, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail and her own coffee cup marked with red lipstick, had rolled her eyes. “Stop fidgeting like a child on speed. It’s making me nervous.”

Bruce’d nearly snorted, but Tony’d just shifted around for the hundredth time in ten minutes, his hand hanging loosely from the back of Bruce’s chair. “Have you represented kids on speed?” he’d asked, and Sif’d huffed at him as she’d sipped her latte. “No, seriously, this is a question I have. Because you’re as much into the broken teenagers as the rich-and-famous ones, so somewhere, there’s gotta be some meth-addled kid who you’ve saved from himself.” He’d paused. “Or herself. Might be herself. You never know.”

Sif’d raised an eyebrow at that, her face blank and placid, and slowly set down her coffee cup. For a moment, she’d regarded the two of them coolly while Tony’d drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Finally, she’d sighed. “When Bruce told me how worried you both were, I don’t think I believed it. But now, I do.”

Tony’d snorted, but his dismissive hand-wave’d done nothing to stop his leg from bouncing—or his worried eyes from flicking toward the nearest window. “Funny what happens when you think your kid might be at the top of Suffolk County’s most-wanted list.”

“Foster child.” Tony’d jerked his head back toward Sif, and for one heart-clenching second, Bruce’d witnessed the hurt that’d bloomed across his face. Sif, on the other hand, had shrugged lightly. “I don’t want to cross our wires. He’s not your child.”

“He’s temporarily our child,” Tony’d responded. He’d glanced down at his hand, half-curled on the tabletop, and Bruce’d dropped his eyes to his coffee cup. “And more than that, he needs our help. And _your_ help, though I feel kind of dirty for admitting that I need help from anyone who pays for space in the _criminal defense_ section of the phone book.”

“At least you chose me over Loki,” Sif’d replied, and sipped her coffee.

The conversation with Sif feels distant now, part of an entirely different life, and Bruce watches as Maria straightens back up to her full height. She plants her hands on her hips and squares her shoulders, towering over Fury’s desk in her navy suit and high heels. “You realize this isn’t some half-assed subpoena for a couple of medical records, right?” she demands. Fury raises his eyebrows in half-hearted curiosity, and anger flashes across her face. “This covers confidential social work records. _Piles_ of records, all of them for the Pierpont foster kids—”

“Former Pierpont foster kids.” When Bruce glances over at Tony, he shrugs. The lazy ease covers up the worry that’s still playing across his face. Maria whips her head around to glare at him. “We’re in a career that demands thoroughness and precision of language. Thought it _might_ be worth mentioning.”

Maria rolls her eyes as she twists back around, and Bruce only realizes he’s squeezed Tony’s arm after Tony’s mouth curls into a tiny almost smile. “It’s a subpoena,” she repeats, “that’s signed by a guy who’s either a probate lawyer in the northwest corner of the state—which I seriously doubt—or an assistant attorney general.” Fury’s lips purse, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tell, and Maria narrows her eyes. “Why is an assistant attorney general signing subpoenas for social work records?”

Fury huffs out half a laugh. “I thought managing the ‘kiddie cases’ was Phil’s job.”

“Not when you’re letting jackasses from upstate run the show, it’s not.”

Fury tips his head to one side as the sharp, almost sneering edge to Maria’s tone fades back into that heavy, uncomfortable silence. Bruce uncurls his fingers from Tony’s arm, suddenly uncomfortable in the too-quiet room. Tony brushes their knuckles together, but not before Jessica flips her ponytail over her shoulder. “Look,” she says, and there’s a flash of surprise on Fury’s face as he turns to glance at her, “I know that this case is sixteen kinds of fucked up. It’s different agencies from different counties trying to play nicely when, really, we’re as bad as high schoolers who don’t want to share our lunch table.”

“It’s really more like sharing the big curly slide on the playground,” Tony offers. Maria sighs, her head shaking slightly, but he raises his hands. “High school kids give each other the cold shoulder. It’s the first-graders who stand at the top of the jungle-gym and go all _Lord of the Flies_ on everybody.”

“Because you’d know all about that,” Maria deadpans.

“We do live with two teenagers and a first-grader,” Bruce points out, and Tony’s brief grin is absolutely blinding.

Jessica starts to grin, too, just a tiny twist of her lips, but it fades the second she glances back at Fury. He’s leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his desk and his whole attention directed toward Jessica. There’s a chink in his armor, somewhere, a tiny crack in his granite façade, but Bruce can’t quite name it. Jessica, on the other hand, just sighs. “We’re bad at working together,” she repeats. “I’m guilty of it as much as anybody in this county is. But sir, and with all the same respect I’d give our D.A. back in Union County: you can’t fuck these kids around. And I’m sorry, but the detectives don’t just want something to read at night while they wait for the next _Game of Thrones_ book to come out. They’re going to use these records.”

“I know,” Fury says. There’s a note of resignation in his voice, and when he shakes his head, Bruce purses his lips. “But as of right now, the situation’s out of my hands.”

“On what _planet_ is this out of your hands, Nick?”

Tony’s voice bursts through the office like a thunderclap, and this time, Bruce shoves his hands in his pockets instead of reaching for his arm. He throws up his hands, all the frustration and worry of the last few days finally boiling over. Bruce briefly expects him to start pacing, but instead, he jabs two fingers in Fury’s direction, his hand quivering in barely controlled rage.

“I have spent weeks—actual, literal weeks, weeks where I should’ve been working on that Killgrave clusterfuck and spending time with my family—trying to unravel this Gordian knot of a case, and the only conclusion I’ve come to is that you’re a fucking liar.” Fury’s jaw twitches, his shoulders clenching almost involuntarily as Tony curls his fingers back into his fist. “Steve’s clueless, Darcy’s clueless, the clerks are clueless, everyone in this godforsaken _building_ is absolutely _useless_ on this case except for you and your, I don’t know, little assistant A.G. boyfriend with the curly signature.” 

“Stark—”

“No,” Tony breaks in, and across the desk, their boss snaps his lips shut. “No chiding bullshit where you make me feel like a kid in the principal’s office. Not today, and _not_ when these kids are on the line.” A tiny tremor rolls through his voice, and he shakes his head sharply. “Not with any kid that comes into our house. Not _ever_.”

When he drops his hands to his side—his fingers trembling just enough that Bruce wants to grip his hand and squeeze until he’s breathing normally again—the silence sweeps back through the room. The eye of the storm, Bruce thinks, and he remembers the wind that’d howled outside the coffee shop as Sif Rowan’d picked at the lid of her coffee cup the previous afternoon.

“We just need to know what to do,” Bruce’d said, and his voice’d sounded sticky and uneven to his own ears. She’d nodded distractedly, her lips rolling into a tight like. “We need to know how to help him while we’re playing this waiting game.”

The corner of her mouth’d kicked up into the ghost of a smile. “There’s no easy answer for that,” she’d said. She’d raised her eyes to meet his and then Tony’s, her face calm and solemn all at once. “In your field, you can work a thousand interventions before the court steps in. Family programs, parenting classes, therapy for the children—whatever the family needs to keep from imploding. Juvenile offender cases are harder. Most of the time, we can’t act until there are charges filed.” She’d shaken her head. “Short of being present the next time they interview him, there’s nothing I can do. Not yet.”

Tony’d rolled his eyes. “So what you’re saying is that we’re waiting for Venus to be in retrograde during a blue moon in one of those weird ‘Chinese money bag’ months.”

Sif’d snorted. “No, what I’m saying is that we’re waiting for an arrest,” she’d replied, and Tony’d fallen completely silent.

He’s still silent now, his fingers clenching into fists against his thighs, and Bruce only realizes he’s sighing after he’s dragged a hand through his hair. “We can’t do anything until we know,” Bruce says, his tone firmer than he expected. Tony and Maria both glance at him, surprise creeping across Maria’s features, but at his side, Jessica nods jerkily. “The case is complicated, it’s a mess, it’s all these people working together for the same purpose but doing it in different ways, but it—” 

He stares down at his hands—raised hands he hardly recognizes, hands that grasp at the air like he expects the words to materialize against his palms—and he shakes his head. His throat feels tight and sticky as he drops them back down to his sides. “We can’t be kept in the dark and still be good parents to them. Something needs to give.”

“And believe me when I say I _know_ that.” Fury releases a long, rough breath, his palm rubbing over the top of his head. When he glances back across his office, he meets all their eyes in turn: Maria first, but then Jessica, and Tony, and Bruce.

The open sincerity in his gaze catches Bruce off guard, and he feels himself swallow.

“I know all of this,” he repeats, his hands falling onto his desk. “I’ve known it from the start of this case, I know it now, and unless something changes, I’ll still know it tomorrow. But as much as I want to help you out here, my hands are tied, and I can’t.”

Maria rolls her lips into a tight line. “And you can’t explain _why_ your hands are tied?” she asks. For the first time since she slapped the subpoena onto Fury’s desk, she sounds worried.

Worse, she _looks_ worried the instant that Fury shakes his head. “Not really, no.”

“On what planet is the district attorney of an entire fucking county not the master of his own destiny?” Tony spits. He throws up his hands again, the anger clear on his face and in his tone, and he rolls his eyes as Bruce’s warning glance. “You keep acting like you’re the wizard, when you’re obviously the man behind the curtain, with the giant floating head of—”

“Stark,” Fury barks, and he’s on his feet before Tony can even snap his mouth shut. His eye flicks between the two of them—Tony, then Bruce, then Tony again—and Bruce feels a sharp buzz of nervousness crawling under his skin. For a few seconds, Fury just watches them in stony silence.

Then, he wets his lips.

“I need you both to listen very closely to what I am saying to you right now,” he says, and his voice is completely even. “I cannot tell _you_ —either of you—what is happening with this case. And I can’t tell anybody in this office—not the people who come to your house for Thanksgiving, not the people who you spend your weekends with, not the people who named you two the honorary uncles of their only goddamn child—what is happening with this case. The only person who is allowed within ten feet of the Pierpont fire or anything spiraling out of that disaster is a special prosecutor from upstate named Mike Peterson.” He pauses just long enough to meet each of their eyes one last time. “Do I make myself clear?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce can see Tony’s throat bob. When he breathes in, he feels like he’s choking. “It’s Teddy, isn’t it?”

Fury shakes his head. “I said everything I’m allowed to say,” he replies, and Bruce’s hands curl into fists as he glances away. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

The next few minutes rush around Bruce like a hurricane, an inescapable span of chaos that leaves him feeling drowned and shaken, all at once. He registers the stark-white shock that spreads across Maria’s face and Jessica’s rising voice as she storms out of the room, but everything else passes by in a hazy half-dream. His hands shake, his eyes prickle, and when someone touches his back, he knows without thinking that it’s Tony.

He’s not sure how he ends up in Tony’s office, or who they pass in the hallway on the way there. His mind’s devoted to too many other things: to Sif’s advice and Jessica’s anger, to Fury’s resignation and Maria’s subpoena, and to Teddy.

Smiling, laughing Teddy, the student with the good grades and the easy manner.

Loyal, unshakable Teddy, Amy’s big brother (in name if not reality) and Miles’s fast friend.

Teddy, who held Bruce’s county ID badge in the flickering light from the Pierpont fire.

The fire he started, or is suspected of starting, the fire that killed his foster family and their—

“I need you to breathe,” Tony says suddenly, and Bruce jerks out of his thoughts to find that his husband’s hands are gripping his arms, fingernails almost biting into the skin. He blinks a few times, his breath ragged and uneven, and when he’s able to search Tony’s face, he finds fear there. Open, unrestrained fear, the kind of fear he saves for private moments in the dark of their bedroom, not his office.

His breath shakes too, and Bruce watches as he drops his eyes and swallows.

“Teddy, he—” Bruce attempts, but everything runs together, sticky and thick in the back of his throat. Tony nods hastily, his throat still bobbing. Bruce drags his fingers through his own hair, but it’s not until he runs his palms down Tony’s arms that he feels grounded enough to string a sentence together. “He couldn’t do this,” he says, and Tony’s wet eyes search his face. “He’s left information out, but he’s not a kid who— Kids like Teddy, they don’t start fires.”

“They want the files,” Tony reminds him, and Bruce rolls his eyes up to the ceiling as though he’ll find an answer painted on the tiles. “Bruce, I don’t like it, I don’t believe it, but Munroe and Howlett are good detectives, and if they’re bringing in a special prosecutor to _prosecute_ this thing, that’s gotta mean—”

“I’ve looked a murderer in the eye, Tony,” Bruce reminds him, and he’s not sure whether it’s the force of his voice or the actual words that lead Tony to press his lips into a tight, thin line. Bruce shakes his head. “I know what a man who kills people—who kills his family, or at least part of it—looks like. Teddy’s hurting, he struggles sometimes, but he’s not _that_.”

Tony wets his lips. “Not everybody who kills someone’s gonna look like your father.”

An ice-cold spike of _something_ —something darker and sharper than all the anger in the world—runs through Bruce’s veins, and he snorts sharply. “You’d be surprised how many similarities there are,” he murmurs.

Tony squeezes his arms harder, a split second away from either the inevitable comeback or the equally inevitable hug, but then someone raps lightly at the door. They step away from each other, Bruce rubbing his face while Tony cards fingers through his messy hair. “No solicitors!” he jokes, but the words tremble.

“Hilarious.” Pepper’s voice is strong and sure, but she still opens the door slowly. There’s blatant worry on her face, and she purses her lips when she sees the two of them standing apart, Bruce’s hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets while Tony scrubs a hand over his goatee. “Jessica Jones just stomped in and demanded to talk to you,” she says carefully. “But if this isn’t—”

“Please tell me she’s brought cigarettes or booze,” Tony interrupts. Pepper frowns disapprovingly, and he shrugs. “A day like today requires at least three Marlboro Reds and a giant bottle of the good stuff.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s a good time,” she says over her shoulder.

Jessica forces a smile as she steps into the office, but it fades the second Pepper shuts the door behind her. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her hair a straggly mess, and for a moment, Bruce can imagine her flight from the office: storming the hallway, shouting at no one, her hands tangled in her hair. She loves Teddy, he remembers, and more than that, she believes in him. 

His heart sinks into his stomach as he steps toward her. “Jessica, we—”

She holds up a hand, her head shaking sharply. “I can’t do the solidarity thing, not now,” she says, and Bruce slows to a stop at Tony’s side. She glances between them briefly, almost as though she’s relearning her faces, and then drops her hand to her side. “My supervisor’s putting together the copies for the detectives and for this Peterson guy,” she explains, “and I need to be there to triple-check them. Redact the stuff about other kids from when Teddy was in other homes, deal with any HIPAA information that’s in there, the whole nine yards. I should be in the car.”

Next to him, Tony swallows. “But you’re not.”

“No. Because there’s something you need to know about the records.” Dread curls in Bruce’s gut as he watches her draw in a long, shaky breath. “Teddy, he’s been in custody a long time, and— I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think it was important anymore. It didn’t matter then, and all this time’s gone by, I didn’t—”

She trails off, and Bruce— As much as he wants to prompt her, his voice feels sticky, like it’s cemented to the very back of his tongue. It’s Tony—his frightened and somehow still fearless husband—who asks, “What is it?”

Jessica sighs and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. When she finally meets their eyes, her face is as helpless as it is terrified.

“When Teddy’s mom died,” she says quietly, “she died in a fire.”

 

==

 

Munroe and Howlett arrive around eight Wednesday night, their collars flipped up against the bitter November wind. “You know why we’re here,” Munroe says, her accent softening the blow.

Bruce nods. In the house, Tony complains about Amy’s taste in Disney original programming while he cleans up the kitchen. Even from the foyer, Bruce hears all the places where worry strains against his artificial cheer.

“You have an arrest warrant?” Bruce asks. The words taste like ash.

Howlett holds out a folded sheet of paper. He’s kind enough to glance away as Bruce reads it, and neither detective mentions the slight tremble in his hand. He folds it up before he hands it back. “Let us send Miles and Amy upstairs before you—”

“Of course,” Munroe agrees, and she hesitates before she accepts his invitation to wait just inside the front door.

The twenty-four hours leading up to the detectives’ arrival, at least to Bruce’s mind, had passed in a surreal, cloudy blur. He remembers bits and pieces of it—roaring at Jessica about lies of omission while Tony gripped his wrist, calling Sif in a frenzy, picking up Teddy early—but everything blends together as walks into the kitchen. His heart hammers in his ears, a percussion beat he can’t escape, and he forces himself to focus on the task at hand.

And, at least a little, on the calming familiarity of Tony’s voice.

It’d been Tony who calmed him the day before, jerking him back away from Jessica and planting a hand on his chest until he’d stopped shouting at her. “I’m sorry!” she’d hollered back, the words almost cracking as she’d thrown her hands into the air. “If I’d thought for a second that it mattered, I would’ve—”

“You didn’t think maybe a history of death-by-fire mattered in this?” Tony’s anger’d burned as brightly as Bruce, but he’d contained it, somehow, his fingers curling into a fist against Bruce’s chest even as he’d refused to lighten his grip. “Sorry, Jess, but the second I believe that’s the second I buy a bridge off you.”

“It was a _gas leak_ , Tony,” she’d retorted, shaking her head roughly. “The fire marshal investigated. Least suspicious circumstances on the planet, just a senile old lady who didn’t realize she’d left the gas on until it leveled part of the building.” She’d sighed, her shoulders softening. “Teddy wasn’t even home, he was at a park down the block.”

“But in the vicinity,” Tony’d said quietly. 

“He was—”

“Close enough for suspicion.” Bruce’s own voice had sounded so quiet, so _resigned_ , that he’d almost blinked at it. Tony’d stared at him, his whole face softening, and slowly slid his hand away. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” Bruce’d said, “and to the detectives, it’ll look like a pattern.”

“But it wasn’t suspicious, it was just—”

“It won’t matter,” Tony’d interrupted with a shake of his head. “Not to the cops, and not to the special prosecutor.”

A few hours later, Sif’d echoed the same thing as her dark, careful eyes flickered between Bruce, Tony, and a fidgeting, stricken Teddy Altman. “They will see this as a second fire you’ve been involved with,” she’d informed him solemnly, and Bruce’d forced himself to glance at the floor while Teddy’s eyes dampened. “They will probably want to examine your mother’s death, see if anything connects that to—”

“I didn’t—” Teddy’d broken in, but his voice’d trembled too hard for him to finish the sentence. Tony’d reached around the back of his chair and squeezed his shoulder, but Teddy’d dropped his eyes to his lap. For a long time, they’d sat in silence, Teddy’s breaths coming in tiny hiccups.

Finally, he’d wet his lips. “I didn’t start the fire that killed my mom,” he’d managed, “and I didn’t start the one that killed Sylvie and Ed. I didn’t.”

“We know,” Bruce’d murmured. Sif’d narrowed her eyes, her lips pursing, and he’d ignored it to reach out and squeeze Teddy’s knee. “We believe you.”

That night, with the kids all in bed and the house draped in darkness, Tony’d carded his fingers through Bruce’s hair and asked, “You do, don’t you?”

Bruce’d frowned. “Do what?”

“Believe him. Believe that all of this, whatever it is, is some— I don’t know, some misunderstanding or confusion or _something_.” Bruce’d snorted softly at his hand-flap, but he’d reached for Tony, too, and twined their fingers together. “You don’t think he could’ve done all this.”

Bruce’d rolled his lips together, his eyes tracing the shape of Tony’s face in the dim glow of the moon outside their window. “Do you think he could?”

“I learned a long time ago that anybody’s capable of anything if they’ve got a good enough reason.” Bruce’d huffed out a breath, ready to roll away—ready to climb out of bed and sleep somewhere else, honestly—but Tony’d caught him by the hip and held him in place. “Including us,” Tony’d blurted, and Bruce’d released his hand to stare at him while he shrugged. “You’d never let something happen to the kids. You’d fight tooth and nail, and I’d be right behind you.”

“We only have one child,” Bruce’d reminded him quietly.

“Legally, maybe, but not spiritually,” Tony’d replied, and kissed him lightly on the collarbone.

Bruce remembers that kiss as he walks into the kitchen, the press of Tony’s mouth against his skin in the still of a November night. He watches as Tony rolls those lips together, the dishtowel hanging over his shoulder as he closes up the dishwasher. He raises his eyebrows, a silent question, and Bruce nods.

He nods back. 

“Upstairs,” he says, and in the kitchen nook, Miles jerks his head up from his social studies book. He’s surrounded by assignments—dreaded algebra, a grammar worksheet, a notecard project for Dr. Gamora—and his pen’s gripped between his teeth. 

Bruce smiles at him, but his son just frowns.

“I don’t—”

“We need you to take Amy and go upstairs,” Tony says, the calm in his voice belying the worry that flashes across his face. He swallows it down before he turns to face Miles, and his grin—plastic and forced, the grin of the Tony Stark who existed before his time at Four Oaks—never reaches his laugh lines. “It’ll be ten, maybe fifteen minutes, then you can come back down.”

Miles glances between them, uncertainty etched across his features, and for a moment, Bruce wants to walk over to him and bundle him up in his arms like a toddler. He wants to protect him from the world—from fires, from strangers, from police officers, from _pain_ —until he’s grown and ready to face the thorns and arrows on his own. 

But then, he remembers the thorns and arrows Miles’s already lived through, and that his arms are nothing compared to that.

“Please,” Bruce says quietly, and Miles wets his lips before he nods.

He leaves his books and assignments spread across the table, a middle school mess in its purest form, and he coaxes Amy off the couch by promising to read her not one but _two_ books of her choosing. She’s already in her pajamas, her hair pulled up into the world’s highest ponytail courtesy of her very kind scout leader, and she grins and waves at Bruce and Tony as she bounds up the stairs ahead of Miles.

Miles looks back over his shoulder before he follows.

Bruce pretends that he’s swallowing pride instead of something harsher.

He leads Munroe and Howlett into the kitchen like the grand marshal of a funerary parade, their footfalls heavy on the carpeting. Tony’s leaning back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest and his face purposely impassive. In this moment, he’s the mastermind of Stark Industries instead of Bruce’s husband, the stone-faced stranger who stands behind Obadiah Stane at press conferences and reminds people of his father.

Bruce is suddenly _so_ grateful for this version of Tony.

“He’s working on a paper in his bedroom,” he tells the detectives, jerking his head toward the tiny hallway that leads toward the garage. The bathroom and laundry room both stand open, but the door to the main guest room—the room that’s now covered in Teddy’s clothes, books, and schoolwork—is closed up tight. The distant, tinny strains of a laptop playing a Pandora station trail through into the quiet. 

Howlett and Munroe exchange careful glances, but Tony just rolls his eyes. “Do you need a map? Because if you can’t tell the difference between a bathroom and a bedroom, then I think—”

“I’ll get him.”

The detectives and Tony all twist to stare at Bruce, Munroe with her brow furrowed and Tony with honest surprise dancing across his expression, but Bruce just shakes his head. “He knows you’re coming,” he says, “and even if he’s not ready for it, he’s—” The words slip away, and he shrugs. “It might as well be one of us.”

“I’ll follow you,” Howlett offers, leaving Munroe to shoot him a tense look while Bruce nods. Across the kitchen, Tony hooks his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, his intensely casual pose at odds with the tension in the room—and, more than that, the tension in his jaw and his eyes. Bruce considers saying something light and funny to reassure him, but he’s never been particularly good at that.

But their eyes meet, and for one, heartbreaking second, they share a tiny smile. 

“Whenever you’re good,” Howlett says suddenly, and the moment’s broken.

The sound of overly cheery pop-punk is louder in front of Teddy’s bedroom door, enough to almost drown out the sound of Bruce’s first, light knock. “Teddy, I need to come in for a minute,” he says, and he hears his voice catch slightly. He thinks he hears something under the music—a rustling, maybe, or the sound of someone moving around—but he’s not entirely sure.

When he glances at Howlett, the detective just shrugs. Still in the kitchen, Munroe stares them both down, her arms tightly crossed.

Bruce rolls his lips together and knocks louder. “Teddy,” he calls out, and this time, he’s certain he hears rustling. Behind him, he hears Howlett shifting his weight, and he feels his heart leap into his throat. “Teddy,” he repeats, “I’m going to come into your room. Ready?”

The door swings open easily, and for a brief second, Bruce’s overwhelmed by the wall of sound that follows, the guitar riffs and peppy drum beat loud enough that he thinks he feels it in his fillings. It’s so loud, so distracting, that Bruce only realizes that there’s a rush of cold air behind it after it hits him. He shivers hard, his teeth chattering, and stares into the room.

The window over Teddy’s bed, the one that opens out to the back yard, stands wide open. A fresh rush of November wind catches the blinds, and they bang roughly against the wall. The pages of Teddy’s English book, open on the desk, rustle, and no one stops them.

“Fuck,” Howlett breathes, and Bruce feels his blood run cold.

Because aside from the wind and the music, Teddy’s room is empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on last chapter, because I've received a lot of questions about it: Teddy lost his original cell phone in the fire, and while it is true that cell phone records are theoretically available, it is unclear whether Munroe and Howlett have enough information to submit a warrant for those records. Plus, remember, we're reading this story through Bruce's eyes and only know as much as he knows. Munroe and Howlett could have the records and be checking Teddy's story for holes. We don't know for sure.
> 
> However, we'll find out more in the future, I promise.
> 
> In other news, I spent last weekend travelling and a couple days this week sort of sick and out of it. As a consequence, I'm pretty far behind on comments. I plan on working on them over the weekend. As always, you guys are all so wonderful, and I am so so grateful for your patience!


	13. One by One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony appear in court as spectators as a complicated criminal case stretches out before them. What’s worse, the special prosecutor has his own ideas about Bruce and Tony—and about how to handle the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very law-heavy. I mean, you made it twelve chapters with very little legal jargon. I needed to shake it up somehow.
> 
> The venue is the place in which a trial is held. When it’s a prosecution, it’s generally the county in which the crime occurred. 
> 
> An interlocutory appeal is an appeal that takes place before a case is final—such as before there is a verdict in a criminal case.
> 
> An _Alford_ plea is one in which a defendant pleads guilty while still denying any wrongdoing and maintaining his innocence. Instead, the defendant basically says, “I admit that the prosecution has enough evidence to convict me, but I didn’t actually do it.” Defendants usually enter into these sorts of pleas to take advantage of plea bargains. They are pretty rare. 
> 
> This chapter gave me a really hard time, but Jen and saranoh saw me through. What's more, their notes on part of the first scene helped me change it into something that works a whole lot better. I moved a lot of things around post-beta, so any remaining mistakes are truly my own.

“All rise,” Judge Smithe says, and Bruce pushes to his feet.

It’s a starkly cold fall day outside the courtroom, and inside, the silence feels like a thick, real presence that threatens to smother them all. He’s spent the last half hour or so in the same seat, fidgeting his way through Thor’s ordinary docket of hearings while he waited for Teddy’s case to be called. Every minute’d felt like an hour, and twice, he’d tapped his watch to ensure it hadn’t died since the last time he’d checked it.

Tony, just as uneasy, had reached over and squeezed his hand each time.

It hadn’t helped.

The last twelve hours feel like twelve lifetimes, like someone’d taken time and rolled it out until it was paper thin and seconds from shattering into pieces. Bruce remembers the night before but through a fog of half-memory that leaves his head reeling even now.

Miles and Amy’d wandered downstairs shortly after Howlett and Munroe’d left in a furious echo of slammed doors and squealing tires. “Did they ask Teddy mean questions?” Amy’d asked, peering through the living room as Bruce’d scrubbed a hand over his face. “Were they mean again?”

Tony, who’d paced trenches in their kitchen floor as the detectives’d dug through Teddy’s bedroom for clues and who’d still looked spooked and panicked , cast a sharp glance in Miles’s direction. Miles’d shrugged, his hands deep in his pockets. “She stuck her face against the window to see outside,” he’d admitted grudgingly. “She heard them leaving and couldn’t _not_ look.”

Tony’s posture’d softened, his face slack and a little helpless as he’d reached for their son. Miles’d half-fallen into his grip, his face against Tony’s shoulder, but Amy’d kept staring up at Bruce. 

“Teddy’s not home right now,” Bruce’d explained , the tremor in his voice echoing the hammering of his heart. “They’ll call us once they talk to him.”

Amy’d frowned. “Where’d he go?”

Bruce’s stomach had churned around itself until he’d felt sick. For a few seconds, he’d felt like a caged animal, cornered and waiting for someone to hit him with a newspaper—or worse.

But before he’d formulated an answer, Miles’d untangled himself from Tony and stepped forward. “He went for a walk,” he’d said easily. Amy’d blinked at him, her lips pressing together, and he’d held out a hand. “Let’s play Mousetrap until my dads make us go to bed.”

She’d immediately narrowed her eyes. “You’re _bad_ at Mousetrap.”

“I know,” he’d replied with a wink, and she’d flashed him a gleeful, victorious grin as she’d run off to find the box. 

Tony’d sidled up to Bruce as the kids’d started assembling the game on the coffee table, his arm bumping comfortably against Bruce’s. “Should it freak me out that he can lie that easily?” he’d joked, and Bruce’d heard the low hum of nervous energy in his voice.

Rather than point that out, though, he’d leaned up against his husband and snorted like he’d missed all the obvious dings in his armor. When Tony’s arm’d snaked around his waist, he’d leaned over to press his face against Tony’s shoulder the same way Miles’d done a few minutes earlier. 

“He’s a good kid,” he’d said quietly, and Tony’d pulled him close enough to hide his face in Bruce’s hair. “Through all of this, he’s just— He’s an amazingly _good_ kid.”

Miles’d proven just how good a kid he was only a short while later, after Hurricane Jones’d arrived in their foyer with the cold November air at her back.

“They picked him up at Billy’s,” Jessica’d explained as she’d strode right past Bruce and headed into the kitchen, leaving Bruce to shove the door shut and race after her. By the time he’d found her in the kitchen, she’d already opened three cabinets in search of a coffee mug. “I knew that’s where he’d go—the couple times he left the shelter after lights out, back before he moved in with Ed and Sylvia, that’s where he always turned up, with his _boy_ —but do you know what the little shit had the audacity to say to me when I rolled up?” 

She’d found her House Targaryen mug but abandoned it on the counter to dig her fingers in her hair. For a moment, she’d worn all her emotions on her sleeve, and the helplessness in her expression’d stolen the breath from Bruce’s lungs—so much so, that he’d forgotten momentarily about the rest of his household.

Jessica’d just shaken her head. “He said he didn’t care if he got arrested,” she’d murmured. “He said he knew it’d happen eventually, that he knew he was a suspect, that none of it mattered. But he told me that the reason he went to Billy’s was—and I am quoting him here—that he ‘didn’t want Miles or Amy to see it happen.’ That he didn’t want to hurt your family.” 

She’d sighed, her hands reaching for the mug again, and for a split second, the words’d branded themselves into Bruce’s memory. But then, just as Bruce’d scrubbed a hand over his own face, he’d heard a tiny, trembling voice ask, “Did Teddy go to jail?”

Bruce hadn’t needed to turn toward the couch to discover Tony, Miles, and Amy all standing there—all _watching_ them, wide-eyed and helpless—but he’d done it anyway. Behind him, Jessica’d released a wounded little noise that’d sounded almost like Amy’s name, but by that time, the damage’d been done.

Amy’d absolutely dissolved into tears.

But it’d been Miles—smart, thoughtful, wonderful Miles—who’d reached for her, Miles who’d gathered her up in his arms, and Miles who’d cradled her protectively as she’d fallen to tiny pieces. And after Jessica’d explained Teddy’s arrest, he’d been the one who steered the tiny girl upstairs, tucked her into his own bed, and cuddled with her until she’d finally drifted to sleep.

Bruce’s heart’d almost broken at that. 

They’d offered the next morning to call Miles in sick to school and bring him to the office—to keep him safe and close, Bruce’d thought, but he’d never _said_ it—but Miles’d refused with a shake of his head. “I can’t spend all day thinking about him,” he’d said quietly, and Bruce’d started down at his coffee. “If I’m there with you and Amy, it’s all I’m going to think about. And Amy’ll cry, and she’ll want me to make it better, and—” His voice’d caught. “I just need to be at school, okay?”

Tony, his hair still damp from his shower, had paused in the middle of refilling his coffee mug to nudge Miles in the shoulder. “We get it,” he’d said, and Bruce’d immediately nodded. “Your dad and me, we wrote the book on distracting noisy brains. We’re completely on board with this.”

“As long as you visit Doctor Gamora if you need to,” Bruce’d added.

Tony’d snapped his fingers and pointed at Bruce, a gesture so comforting and familiar after the last few hours of chaos that Bruce’d almost laughed aloud. “What your smart dad said.”

Miles’d rolled his eyes. “Like you’re not both smart,” he’d muttered, and Tony’d leaned over and kissed him on the side of the head.

But in the car, Miles’d rested his forehead against the passenger’s side window. “I think Teddy knew he was going to get arrested,” he’d said softly.

Bruce’d swallowed around the tight feeling in the back of his throat as they’d passed yet another bank of bare-branched trees. “Why do you think that?” he’d asked after a few beats too long. 

“Because I think he tried to tell me,” Miles’d replied, but then he’d dropped the subject to stare out the window.

Doctor Gamora’d e-mailed about an hour after the first bell, explaining that she’d pulled Miles into a private study hall to both “keep him busy and keep him talking.” Amy, too tired and tearful to attend school, had decided to cling to a wide variety of Bruce’s coworkers, drifting like a wandering traveler from Pepper to Darcy to “Uncle Bucky” and then to Natasha.

“I’ll keep her busy,” Natasha’d promised, brandishing a box of colored pencils in one hand and a makeup bag in the other. “You and Tony go take care of Teddy.”

Bruce’d smiled and thanked her before heading down to Judge Smithe’s courtroom to do exactly that.

He hadn’t really been surprised to find a handful of familiar faces in the otherwise-empty courtroom.

“We’re showing solidarity,” Kate Bishop’d explained with a shrug, her braid flopping off her shoulder. “You know, that whole ‘all for one and one for all’ thing.”

Tony’d snorted, but he’d also grinned for the first time all day. “Great idea, Katniss, but there’re about three too many little cronies here for you all to count as the Musketeers.”

He’d reached forward as though he’d intended to tug her long braid, and Billy’d laughed as both she _and_ Bruce had rolled their eyes at him. “Actually,” Billy’d offered after Bruce’d dragged Tony’s hand away, “we’re a lot more like the motley collection of friends in—”

“You’re gonna say _RENT_ , aren’t you?” Eli Bradley’d cut in, and next to him, America Chavez’d snickered hard enough that she’d almost choked on her bubble gum. When Billy’d smiled, Eli’d pointed a finger at his nose. “Every time you bring up that show, you compare me to Mark. I am _not_ a Mark.”

America’d snorted. “For now,” she’d intoned, and she’d immediately puckered her lips in Kate’s general direction. David Alleyne’d snorted a laugh, and when Kate’d twisted around just as America started to make wet kissing noises, she’d shoved her friend hard enough that she’d stumbled. She’d laughed, though, and America’d elbowed her back with exactly zero malice.

David’d started humming “Tango: Maureen.” Eli’d stepped meaningfully on his foot.

When Jessica Jones’d arrived a minute or two later, she’d stopped in the doorway and stared at all five teenagers. “Do _not_ tell me you all skipped class to be here,” she’d said sharply.

Billy and David had both dropped their eyes down to the floor, but Kate’d just shrugged again. “Don’t ask us, and we won’t tell you,” she’d replied.

Jessica’d muttered something about ingrates and rapscallions as she’d stomped into the gallery—but in the end, she’d sat down next to Kate and offered all the kids gum out of her bottomless pit of a purse.

Bruce is still thinking of this—and the way America Chavez snaps her gum as they wait for Judge Smithe to sit down—when the judge says, “Be seated.” He hesitates, caught in his thoughts for a moment, until Tony catches him by the wrist and drags him back down into his seat.

The second secured door, the one that connects to the private hallway used to transport prisoners between the in-house cell block and the various courtrooms, opens just as Judge Smithe flips open her case file, and one of the courthouse security officers steps through with Teddy in tow. He wears the standard issue juvenile detention sweatpants and t-shirt—the pants an ugly shade of dark green, the t-shirt off-white and stamped with SCJDC across the breast—and his feet are covered with thick white crew socks and athletic sandals. He focuses on the floor, shuffling along like he’s wearing invisible ankle shackles, his blond hair flat and falling onto his forehead. Somehow, he looks far too old for the juvenile courtroom with the brightly colored mural.

In the row ahead of them, Billy releases a strangled sound, and even though Kate reaches over and digs her fingers into his forearm, Teddy’s head jerks up. For one, tense moment, he scans the gallery of familiar faces: five of his best friends, his social worker, Detective Munroe, and, in the last row, his foster parents. The corner of his mouth ticks up as he meets Bruce’s eyes, though, and as much as Bruce’s whole heart and mind ache, he finds himself smiling back.

Tony nods a greeting, and with his free hand, Billy offers a tiny, half-shy wave.

Teddy raises one hand to wave back, but then Sif’s stepping up behind him and steering him into one of the chairs at the defense table. He walks up to the table obediently, but he also keeps casting long looks over his shoulders at all of them: his friends, but also Bruce and Tony.

Bruce forces himself to keep smiling until Sif physically plants a hand on Teddy’s shoulder and directs him down into his chair.

On the bench, Judge Smithe hides her tiny smile by dipping her head down to the file in front of her. “We’re here today on case number 13-0175JO, the State versus T.R.A., a juvenile born in 1997.” She flips through a few pages of the file before she huffs out a breath. “Looks like we started motion practice on this case before the ink on the arrest warrant even dried. Let’s do appearances, and then maybe someone can explain—”

She glances up from the file then, her glasses balanced on the very edge of her nose, and blinks when she realizes the state’s counsel table is empty. Thor’d rushed out of the courtroom as soon as his two hearings had finished, promising to collect the special prosecutor on the way out. “He is formidable,” he’d murmured to Bruce before he’d stepped into the hallway.

Tony’d rolled his eyes. “Formidable. Really? He’s a guy who can’t hack it at one office and needs to play musical trials.”

“Just like Fury and Melinda May both used to be,” Bruce’d reminded him, and Tony’d fallen abruptly silent. 

Now, Sif rises smoothly from her seat. “I believe Mister Odinson went to find the prosecutor on this case, your honor,” she explains, and she forces a small smile as Judge Smithe frowns. “He’s in from the attorney general’s office, and I’m not sure he knows—”

“Sorry, your honor,” another voice says, and Bruce jerks his head toward the courtroom doors just as they start to swing shut. The man who enters smiles warmly as he walks toward the well of the courtroom, his movement so natural that Bruce only notices the way he favors his right leg _after_ he’s set his briefcase on counsel table. “Mister Odinson pointed me in the right direction, but I got a little lost. One of the clerks had to reorient me.”

The corner of Judge Smithe’s mouth kicks into a tiny smile. “Mister Peterson, I presume?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peterson answers. “And if you could give me a moment—”

She nods. “By all means.”

He nods back, his manner warm and easy as he unpacks his files from his briefcase. Sif eyes him for a moment before she finally slides back into her seat, her lips pursed into a small frown, but for the first time in the last day, Bruce feels the tension in his muscles start to unravel. Since Jessica’d stormed into their house the night before, he’d worried about what kind of lawyer Special Prosecutor Mike Peterson might be and how he’d treat Teddy’s case, but now—

Now, Peterson flips open a couple manila folders, unearths a pen from his pocket, and offers another charming smile to the judge.

At Bruce’s side, Tony releases a long, slow breath. “I think it might not actually be hate at first sight,” he admits, and Bruce rolls his eyes a little as he nudges their arms together.

Tony, predictably, squeezes his hand before he settles.

“Appearances, Mister Peterson?” Smithe prompts once Peterson’s finished arranging the table.

He nods. “Absolutely, your honor. Due to a conflict of interest in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office—which I think is noted in the file—the State appears by Special Prosecutor Michael Peterson.”

“And the juvenile appears in person and with counsel, Sif Rowan,” Sif replies as she stands. Peterson glances briefly in her direction, still smiling, and her jaw tightens. “Your honor, if I can explain the strange posture of this case—”

“Actually, if you wouldn’t mind,” Peterson interrupts, and Sif freezes in the middle of her sentence. Her whole body tenses up, and for a terrifying moment, Bruce expects her to twist around and tear Peterson’s head from his neck. When her gaze flicks in his direction, he raises his hands. “I don’t want to intrude,” he says, his tone a little too blithe to really come across as sincere, “but I thought I might be in the best position to fill the judge in on the case.”

Sif releases a tiny snort. “Because someone from the A.G.’s office is the best person to—”

“Ms. Rowan,” Smithe warns in a tone that suggests she regularly interrupts one of Sif’s sharp-tongued tirades. When Sif glances toward the bench, the judge nods slightly, and Sif screws up her face into some sort of frown as she lowers herself back into her seat. Smithe smiles slightly as she removes her glasses, then swivels her chair toward Peterson. “Let me just make sure I’m understanding this correctly,” she says, and Peterson raises his eyebrows obligingly. “There’s a conflict with the D.A.’s office and you were called in, correct?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“And you filed the subpoena for social work records, the arrest warrant, and the charges in this case?”

Peterson nods. “And the subpoena for cell phone records as well, ma’am.”

Smithe frowns and reaches for her glasses, but not before Teddy jerks his head up from his legal pad in surprise. His pen slips out of his hand and lands on the floor, but instead of reaching for it, he stares blankly ahead of him. Sif touches his arm gently, but he twists away, his eyes flicking back over his shoulder at the gallery.

In the row in front of Bruce and Tony, Kate and Billy bend their heads together, murmuring too quietly to be overheard. Bruce purses his lips as Kate glances across the well of the courtroom to her friend, and Teddy swallows as she shakes her head slightly.

Tony tugs on Bruce’s hand, pulling him from his own confusion, and he looks over just in time to catch a flash of worry crossing Tony’s face. “If they rounded up his cell phone records—” he starts to say, but Bruce cuts him off with a quick, almost too-urgent nod.

If Munroe and Howlett—and Peterson, Bruce thinks as he glances back toward to too-placid prosecutor—uncovered Teddy’s cell phone records, they might’ve finally uncovered whatever half-truths the teen’d told about the night of the fire. They might’ve found actual evidence, and the thought alone causes a spike of vertigo-like nausea to course through him.

On the bench, though, Smithe finally nods. “The documents are out of order, but here’s the subpoena for cell phone records.” She pauses before she glances over at Peterson. “And also, apparently, a motion for change of venue.”

“Change of—” Sif starts, her voice like a lightning crack of anger as she pushes out of her seat. Smithe shoots her a sharp warning glance, and Sif balls her hands into fists as she rests them on counsel table. “Your honor,” she says tightly, “I am sorry, but it is a miscarriage of justice to ask for a change of venue—”

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it, Ms. Rowan,” Smithe replies curtly, but for the first time since Peterson’d strode into the room, her tone’s tense and dark. Sif slowly settles back into her seat, her hands spreading against the tabletop as the judge twists back to Peterson. “Should I be preparing for any more motions in the near future, Mister Peterson?”

“Just one, your honor,” Peterson replies. He unbuttons his jacket, a split-second stall that allows him a chance to reapply his easy smile. “As a corollary to the motion for change of venue, I will have a motion asking you to recuse yourself from this case on your desk by the end of the day today.”

Sif plants her hands on counsel table, ready to stand again, but Smithe beats her to the punch by simply blinking blankly at Peterson. All the good humor drains from her face as she and the prosecutor stare one another down. Bruce can’t imagine holding onto a smile, not when Ilsa Smithe’s removing her glasses to stare him down. “On what grounds are you asking for recusal?” she asks.

The question’s carefully neutral, the practiced tone of a long-time judge, and Peterson’s mouth twitches almost nervously as he swallows. “Public record indicates that you’re the individual who married Mister Altman’s foster parents,” he says. Tony immediately stiffens, his head jerking in Bruce’s direction as Bruce’s own eyes widen. In the well of the courtroom, Peterson just shrugs a slim shoulder. “Given that Mister Banner already appears in front of you regularly, there’s a concern you might not be impartial.”

Judge Smithe’s jaw clenches as she leans forward, her hands folding tightly atop the bench. “You think my impartiality is affected by the fact I read Mister Stark and _Doctor_ Banner their wedding vows?” she asks, and Peterson nods smoothly. Smithe snorts and glances at the ceiling, very nearly rolling her eyes. “Mister Peterson, I don’t know about your relationship with other judges in this state, but let me make one thing very clear: right now, you are in my courtroom, prosecuting one of _my_ juvenile offender cases. And it will only go to another judge after you have pried it from my cold, dead hands. Save your printer ink, because I will _not_ be recusing myself.” She reaches for her glasses. “Anything else?”

In front of Bruce, America releases a noise like a long, slow whistle, and Judge Smithe flicks sharp eyes in her direction. She slouches slightly in response, but Bruce can see the barest hint of a smile pressing at the corners of her mouth. 

At counsel table, though, Peterson is definitely _not_ smiling. He rolls his lips together for a moment before he answers, “No, ma’am.”

“Good,” she replies, and settles her glasses on her nose. “Let’s get this hearing under way, then, shall we?”

Peterson slips quietly into his seat, but the tension in the room’s still heavy, an almost palpable weight that hovers over them all as Smithe flips back to the charging document and starts to review Teddy’s case with him. Teddy keeps his eyes on the table as she reads off the charges—three counts of murder caused in the commission of arson, words that sit on Bruce’s chest like stones. Tony holds his hand through the whole thing, their knees bumping as the judge reviews Teddy’s rights and explains the possibility of being tried as an adult, but Tony’s presence is so distracting and soothing that Bruce hardly hears Smithe’s words. He focuses on the warmth of Tony’s palm instead of the fear and sorrow in his eyes, on the familiar press of his leg instead of the moment when Jessica hands Billy a tissue, and on the cadence of Tony’s breath instead of the hammering of his own heart. But the longer the hearing wears on, the further Teddy’s shoulders slump, until he’s bunched up in the chair like a toddler, his responses nearly whispers.

Something fierce and protective curls in the pit of Bruce’s stomach, a red-hot fire that licks at his nerves the longer he watches Peterson nod along to all of Judge Smithe’s explanation. Last night, he’d stood silent and helpless as they’d allowed the detectives to search Teddy’s room, watching and listening as they’d reduced a smart, caring boy to a criminal defendant. He’d let them transform Teddy into a suspect, into faceless criminal instead of an orphan who loved his sister and his friends. 

Now, suddenly, he wants to leap to his feet, to stop this farce and demand that Teddy be sent home to him and Tony and Miles and Amy.

Suddenly, he’s certain to his bones that Teddy’s innocent—and more, that Teddy deserves better than being treated like a killer by a smirking special prosecutor.

He almost says that—almost protests, somehow—until Tony squeezes his hand. He jumps a little at that, surprised by the way Tony’s fingers contract, but when he meets Tony’s eyes, Tony shakes his head. “I know and love the rage monster,” he murmurs, his voice warm and warning at the same time, “but right now, we’re just parents.”

“I—”

“Big guy,” he presses, those two simple words almost pleading with Bruce: for patience, for restraint, for a deep breath instead of the tight, shallow ones that keep catching in the back of Bruce’s throat. “He’s already got an attorney. He needs us for something else.”

When Bruce follows his eyes toward counsel table, it’s just in time to watch Teddy wipe his face before telling Judge Smithe, “Yes, ma’am.”

The fire in Bruce’s belly, it dims at that.

It dims, and when he releases a long breath, it shakes as much as Teddy’s voice.

“Do we have any arguments on bond?” Smithe asks a moment later, her glasses resting atop the now-closed case file. “I’m assuming it’s not a foregone conclusion that a juvenile with no record should be in detention.”

“Actually, your honor, it should be,” Peterson says. He rises easily to his feet, still favoring his right leg, and places his hands on counsel table. “We have a sixteen-year-old who’s accused of three of the most serious felonies in our state. That alone should be enough to keep him in detention pending trial. But you add in the fact that his mother died in the same manner—”

“Your _honor_!” Sif half-shouts, springing out of her chair. She rolls her eyes when Smithe raises a hand, but the judge’s expression is dark and hard as she stares down at the prosecutor.

Peterson barely misses a beat, his eyes dropping to a legal pad on the table in front of him as he continues. “If you add in the fact that his mother died in a fire,” he presses, “the questionable cell phone history that the detectives are still sorting through—”

“History no one’s shared with the defense,” Sif notes, her voice _just_ loud enough to carry.

“—his constant attempts to thwart law enforcement by lying, and his decision to run away the night he was arrested, it’s clear that he can’t be trusted to stay in his foster care placement.” He glances briefly over his shoulder, his dark eyes flicking between Bruce and Tony, and Bruce feels his stomach tighten involuntarily. “Frankly, I don’t know if his foster parents can keep him in placement, either.”

At defense table, Sif throws up her hands. “ _Judge_ ,” she protests, and Smithe shoots her another irritated glance as Peterson finally sinks back down into his seat. Smithe waits until he’s settled to shift her chair in Sif’s direction. They stare at each other for a moment, Sif’s hands gripping her hips while Smithe watches her carefully. 

Finally, almost grudgingly, the judge nods. “I take it you disagree,” she says, and there’s the barest hint of humor in her voice.

“I absolutely disagree,” Sif replies. She tosses her ponytail over her shoulder as Smithe leans back in her chair. “Aside from the fact that Teddy’s pled not guilty—a plea he keeps until the State proves him guilty—we’re looking at a kid with absolutely no criminal history. He’s a model student, and the only blips on his radar are from a couple bad foster care placements.” 

She pauses then, her shoulders finally starting to soften as the tension in the courtroom uncoils, and Bruce feels his own nerves start to settle. “I submitted discovery requests this morning, but Jemma Simmons in the clerk’s office isn’t sure yet how they’re going to disperse documents to Mister Peterson,” she continues. “Until I know what’s in those cell phone records and those social work files, I can’t really speak to what happened to his mother or his quote-unquote ‘questionable cell phone history.’ And Teddy will be the first person to admit that leaving his placement last night was the wrong decision, but he only left so the two other children in the house wouldn’t see him get arrested.” She sighs and lets her hands fall to her sides. “He’s not going to run or hide from this,” she finishes, and next to her, Teddy nods. “He’s in this for the long haul, whatever it looks like.”

She smoothes her slacks before she settles back into her chair, and even from his place in the back of the gallery, Bruce is _sure_ he hears Teddy murmur his thanks. Sif squeezes his wrist briefly, a tiny smile sparking in the corners of her eyes. Judge Smithe rocks back in her chair slightly, her attention focused on the exchange between the teen and his attorney—at least, until Teddy raises his chin.

He looks straight ahead at the judge, and for the first time since the hearing started, Smithe smiles warmly enough that it finds her laugh lines. “I take it you want to say something on your own behalf, Teddy?”

“Yes, your honor,” Teddy says stiffly, and he rises when she nods her assent. His hands search his green sweatpants for pockets, his fingers picking at the seams before he realizes there’s nowhere to put them. When he folds them in front of his body, he squares his shoulders, and the only outward sign of nervousness is the way he carefully wets his lips. “Everything S—Ms. Rowan said about me leaving the house, and why I left, is true,” he explains, his voice slightly uneven but clear as he addresses the court. “And I totally understand if you want to put me in the detention hall, but I— I mean, you should know—” 

The words quiver, and he drops his eyes to the tabletop as he swallows thickly. For a moment, the only sound in Bruce’s ears is his own shaky breathing. 

“I didn’t do anything to Ed, Sylvie, and Tristan,” Teddy finally manages, swiping his fingers under his eyes. “What happened is awful, I get that, but I just— I really just want to go home.”

The last word, _home_ , carries through the courtroom with such finality that Bruce’s throat almost closes up, his eyes suddenly prickling and his breath catching around the emotion that threatens to drown him. Next to him, Tony scratches a hand over his goatee and looks away, hiding his face and mouth as he, too, drags in a few shaky breaths. A row in front of them, Billy releases a wet sniffle, and both Kate and Eli reach to sling arms around him. Bruce realizes belatedly that America’s hand is curled around Kate’s wrist, her thumb stroking against the other girl’s palm. 

Judge Smithe considers Teddy for a moment, her eyes calm and careful as she watches him from the bench. She purses her lips into a slight frown. “You appreciate how serious these charges are, don’t you? That this could potentially end in you spending the rest of your life in prison?”

Teddy nods jerkily. “I know.”

“And you realize that, if I take Mister Peterson at his word and believe that this is part of a pattern of behavior, I’m putting your foster parents and foster siblings at risk by letting you return to your placement?”

He sucks in a sharp, almost painful breath. “Judge, I’d _never_ —”

Smithe raises a hand, and Teddy snaps his mouth shut. When he nods a second time, it’s while he dries one of his cheeks with quick, trembling fingers. 

She watches him for a few more seconds before she leans forward in her chair. “Before I saw you and your attorney today, Teddy, I was ready to leave you in detention without so much as a second thought. But then, I recognized you.” Teddy’s head springs up at that, and she smiles gently. “You probably forgot that I’m the judge who’s seen all of your friends’ cases. Some of them are even here, supporting you the way you’ve supported them. But more than that? Detective Howlett wrote a letter to this court suggesting that we put you on electronic monitoring rather than placing you in detention.”

Almost everyone in the courtroom, Munroe included, twists to stare at Howlett. The detective raises his hands sheepishly, his smile belying his embarrassment, and for a half-second, Bruce wants to walk up to him and hug him. Munroe, on the other hand, hisses something into his ear that turns his smile into a much darker expression.

Smithe releases a breath that sounds a lot like a chuckle and folds her hand atop the bench. “I’m going to give your attorney two weeks to respond to Mister Peterson’s motions, at which point we’ll have a hearing,” she explains, and Teddy nods a third time. “I’m sure one of the motions will be a motion to change your bond and place you in detention. So you have two weeks to prove to me and everyone in this room that you are good as gold and _not_ the person these charges and the State would have me believe. That includes an electronic ankle bracelet, monitoring by a juvenile services worker, the whole nine yards. Ms. Rowan will explain it to you.”

“Definitely, your honor,” Sif agrees. 

Smithe’s mouth twitches in acknowledgement, but her eyes never drift away from Teddy’s face. “I don’t know what’s going on with this case,” she admits, her tone several degrees softer than before. “Reading the file, it seems more like something out of a _Dateline_ episode than reality. I hope that it makes more sense by the next time I see you.”

Teddy wets his lips as another heavy silence sweeps across the courtroom. This time, instead of nodding, he swallows. “I hope so too, your honor.”

“Good,” Smithe says, and her smile reaches her eyes. “In that case, I’ll see you and everyone else in two weeks. Mister Peterson, I look forward to your motions.”

“You’ll be receiving several,” Peterson says, rising stiffly.

Smithe snorts quietly. “I’d expect nothing less. Court’s adjourned.”

Bruce knows he stands when the court reporter tells him to, his knees strangely shaky as he pushes to his feet, but it all fades to white noise when Tony grabs him around the waist and hugs him like a dying man. Kate and America high-five, Jessica hisses at them to behave themselves, and in the front row, Munroe stands and storms out of the courtroom without a single word. At defense table, Teddy reaches out and impulsively hugs Sif, his big arms wrapping around her slender shoulders, and she freezes for a split-second before she hugs him back.

“This isn’t the end,” Bruce hears himself say, and he’s surprised to discover he’s facing Tony, his hands gripping his husband’s forearms until his knuckles are almost white. Tony stares at him, his eyes damp and beautiful, and Bruce realizes after a split-second that his own breath’s shaking. He feels a damp prickle against his own eyelids, and he swallows against it. “Tony, he’s still charged with felony murder, he’s—”

“Baby steps,” Tony says, and his hands flex on Bruce’s waist. “First this hill, then the rest of them, okay? One by one.”

Bruce nods roughly. “One by one,” he echoes, and he watches Teddy shake Howlett’s hand before Tony reels him back in.

 

==

 

“The change of venue motion will be the worst of it,” Sif says Friday night, a pencil threaded through her ponytail as she leans against the kitchen island. “Of all the motions, that’s the one I’m worried he’ll win.”

The house feels too big and too empty as Sif shakes her head, her case file spread out in front of her. She’d dismantled the whole thing when she’d arrived at the house—the motions from Peterson, her half-started responses, the charging document and underlying warrant—and walked Teddy through it while Bruce and Tony corralled Amy and a very antsy Dot Barnes in the living room. “But I _like_ Miss Sif,” Dot’d complained at one point, her hands on her hips and her lower lip jutting out at Tony. “She’s nice.”

Tony’d snorted and, true to form, had pressed a finger to their niece’s nose. “And you’ve just proven that you know nothing about Sif based on your word choice, because trust me when I say she’s not the least bit nice.” Back in the kitchen, Sif’d wrinkled her nose in the middle of answering one of Teddy’s questions, her expression darkening, and Tony’d waved a hand. “She’s talented and ruthless and maybe one of the best juvenile defense attorneys on the planet, but trust me: not nice.”

“She’s nice to Teddy,” Amy’d pointed out.

“And we’re paying her more than a fair rate for that niceness,” Tony’d responded, and he’d sworn under his breath when Sif’d flung a pen into the living room and nailed him in the back of the head.

Steve and Bucky’d dropped Dot off just before dinner to attend a long-standing “adults only” dinner date with some church friends, Steve apologizing a dozen-plus times before Bruce’d finally shaken his head. “Miles is seeing a movie with Ganke and a couple other kids from school,” he’d said, “and Teddy’s attorney is coming over to discuss trial strategy. Amy could use the distraction.”

Steve’d nodded a little, his hands sliding into the pockets of his suit slacks. “They reported about the charge in the paper,” he’d said after a few seconds, his eyes cast down at the welcome mat. “No names because he’s a juvenile, but they said three counts of felony murder.”

Bruce’d glanced out into the early evening dark. Bucky, who’d waited in the car as Steve’d herded Dot and a few hours’ worth of activities into the house, had raised a hand in greeting before flashing the headlights a few times. 

Bruce’d chuckled. “I think you’re being beckoned.”

Steve’d rolled his eyes. “He pretends like Sam and Riley are my friends, but he’s the one who’s hell-bent on showing up fifteen minutes early with wine.”

“Because I can’t imagine the man Darcy voted ‘best dressed not-Tony attorney’ wanting to leave a good impression,” Bruce’d replied, and Steve’d grinned at him before patting his arm and wandering off.

Dot’s still at the house now, but upstairs with Amy, curled up in the master bedroom and watching a movie on the television there. Last time Bruce’d checked on them, he’d discovered they’d used pillows, blankets and one of the bedside lamps to create an enormous fort on top of the bed. Worse, one of the girls’d found Tony’s secret stash of bedroom sweets and had poured chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds, freeze-dried blueberries, and banana chips out on several carefully placed rows of toilet paper.

They’d been laughing and whispering, though, like happy, carefree girls.

Bruce’d shut the door and left them to their own devices. 

Tony replaces the coffee pot back in the machine before he twists around to glance at Sif, his eyebrows climbing almost into his hairline. “The man’s filing motions for Smithe to recuse, motions to pursue the maximum, and probably a motion to try an innocent sixteen-year-old as an adult, and you’re worried about him tossing the case over to Clarion County?” He hoists himself up onto the counter. “Far be it for a humble appellate attorney—” 

“Humble?” Sif asks, and Bruce snickers into his tea.

“—to tell a defense attorney how to do her job, but shouldn’t you be trying to keep Teddy out of maximum-security grown-up prison instead of gnashing your teeth about a Franklin County road trip?”

He swings his legs idly, and Sif sighs as she glances over at Bruce. “How do you live like this?”

“Carefully,” Bruce replies, and Tony stretches until he can prod Bruce in the hip with his bare toes.

Bruce reaches back to squeeze his ankle—just one of the thousand casual touches that’ve sustained them both through the last few days—but Sif just shakes her head again. She flips her file shut and leans forward on her elbows. “Bar exam question,” she says, and Bruce can practically _hear_ Tony’s scowl. “What are the four grounds for change of venue?”

“Being a whiny little diaper baby of a special prosecutor?” Tony asks. Bruce glances over his shoulder to send him a warning glance, and he shrugs. “What? I have to assume that’s what the motion says. _The State, by and through counsel Mike Peterson, hereby moves the court to accept that I’m a whiny diaper baby and_ —”

“One: the crime was charged in the wrong county,” Bruce interrupts with a little sigh, and Tony rolls his eyes as he sips his coffee. Across the island from them, Sif nods. “Two: the venue is inconvenient to the parties and the witnesses. Three is if the only judge who can hear the case is disqualified for a whole laundry list of reasons.” 

He pauses, his lips pressing together as he attempts to remember the fourth ground. Sif turns her coffee mug around in her hands. “And four: the parties can’t receive a fair and impartial trial in the venue,” she finishes quietly.

Cold dread darts through Bruce, its skeletal fingers curling around his stomach, but behind him, Tony snorts. “Venue case law’s pretty clear that the ‘impartial trial’ bullshit’s all about a poisoned jury pool,” he says, and Bruce finds himself nodding as he glances back at his husband. “Seriously, every case the appellate division’s ever heard is about media coverage and the whole county being so small that everybody’s a friend of a friend of somebody’s cousin. He can’t claim that here.”

“No, but he _can_ claim that the identity of Teddy’s new foster parents poisons the jury and this county’s criminal justice machine.”

Bruce’s heart lodges in his throat, and despite his best efforts and several big gulps of his lukewarm tea, he can’t loosen it enough to breathe properly. Tony slides quietly off the counter and comes to stand next to him, their shoulders bumping as he leans against the island.

“He can, or he has?” Tony asks softly.

“You know I can’t tell you what’s in the motions. Not when you’re not _actually_ the legal guardians.” Tony rolls his eyes, about to protest, but she holds up hand. 

For a moment, silence sweeps back across the room. Bruce curls his fingers against his mug. 

“Think about it rationally,” she says after a few more beats, her dark eyes flicking between him and Tony. “You’re trying a triple-murder case where your defendant is a smart, likeable orphan with an adorable foster sister he saved from certain death. You want to throw the book at him, but one foster parent is the favorite son of one of the country’s most powerful corporations and the head of several charities.” 

Tony releases a rough huff of breath, but he glances down at his coffee mug. 

“The other foster parent,” Sif continues, “is a child welfare prosecutor who regularly appears in front of the judge who’s trying is case. Both work in the prosecutor’s office. Both have appeared on the news in their respective positions as assistant district attorneys. And both are incredibly well-liked by the local legal community.”

Her eyes linger on Bruce, and he drops his eyes to his tea before he finishes off the last too-cool sips. Next to him, Tony plays with his wedding band, his face half-hidden. He looks lost, Bruce thinks, like a wandering shadow instead of a whole person.

Bruce wets his lips before he looks back over at Sif. “That won’t necessarily poison the jury pool,” he points out. She snorts half a laugh, and he frowns at her. “It might make his job harder, but in the end—”

“The question’s not about how hard it is, it’s about how hard Judge Smithe’s willing to work,” Sif interrupts. She tosses her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Bruce, if she denies the motion, he can file an interlocutory appeal. An unbiased, uninvolved court six hours away might disagree with her. And,” she adds, gesturing slightly with her mug, “even if the appellate court doesn’t, and venue stays down here, that’s another eight or nine months that this case is pending. It brings Teddy eight or nine months closer to the age of majority, it leaves witnesses time to forget while buying Peterson time to plan, it changes the case’s entire dynamics until—” 

“You really think he’d stall?” Tony demands. He shakes his head as one hand digs into his hair. “I totally buy that he thinks our status in the community turns him into an instant loser, but the guy presented like a grown-up Boy Scout, complete with the insincere bullshit smile and the can-do attitude.” Bruce nearly chuckles at that, and Tony flashes him a half-second grin before he twists back toward Sif. “He’s the type who writes odes to the benefits of judicial economy, not the opposite.”

“No, he’s the type who wants to win,” Sif replies simply, and Bruce watches as Tony purses his lips into a tight frown. “His conviction rate is stellar, and he’s an expert on juvenile felony prosecution. If he loses the venue argument but an appeal helps him win anyway, then . . . ” 

She trails off, one shoulder lifting in a shrug, and Bruce turns his empty mug around in his hands. Next to him, Tony huffs an angry breath before downing the rest of his coffee. When he turns around for a refill, his shoulders are taut under his t-shirt. 

Bruce studies the line of his back for a few seconds before he asks, “What about a plea offer?”

Tony stills, his fingers closing around the handle to the coffee pot, and Bruce allows him a few beats of silence before he glances back at Sif. She’s staring at her hands, and for the first time all night, Bruce can’t read her expression. “It’s almost impossible to convict a teenager on a single count like this, never mind three. If he agrees pleads as a juvenile to a reduced charge, he might—”

“Get out before he’s thirty?” Sif finishes for him. Guilt curls in Bruce’s stomach as he looks down at the countertop, but he nods. She releases a long, slow breath. “I did the math,” she admits quietly. “If he pleas as a juvenile, he’d be in detention up through the statutory limit and on probation for at least five years after that. He’d be twenty-seven—and have whatever convictions he’s agreed to on his record.” Something soft and sad creeps into her tone, and when Bruce finally raises his eyes, it’s to watch her finish off the last swallow of her coffee. “And what’s more, he’s not interested.”

“Nobody should be interested in copping to something they didn’t do,” Tony says tightly. He reaches around Bruce to steal his empty mug, leaving the full one in its stead. Bruce rolls his eyes, but he also cups his hands around the hot ceramic. When Tony leans back against the island, he presses their arms together. “I get that it’s better felony murder and the rest of his life in prison, but unless everyone in this room thinks the kid’s a murderer—”

“And ignores the existence of _Alford_ pleas,” Sif mutters.

“—we shouldn’t even be having this part of the conversation.” Bruce rolls his lips together, and Tony nudges him in the arm. “We _shouldn’t_.”

“Six years in detention isn’t three consecutive life sentences,” Sif points out gently.

“Maybe not,” Tony says, “but it’s still exactly six years too many for an innocent kid.”

Sif leaves a few minutes after, shaking their hands and thanking them for their coffee, and Tony barely waits for Bruce to close the front door before he’s wrapping arms around him. He trembles slightly, the same way they’ve both trembled since Teddy’s arrest, high-voltage nerves thrumming under skin that’s suddenly too thin and soft. He digs his fingers into Bruce’s hair, and Bruce sighs against his neck.

“We should check on him,” Bruce hears himself say, the words distant and muffled as he presses his nose into Tony’s skin. “Miles’ll be home in an hour, he’ll want to talk, so we should—”

“In one second,” Tony says, and when he kisses Bruce on his temple, Bruce swears he almost melts.

They find Teddy sprawled out on the bed in his bedroom—it’s no longer the guest room, not after the detectives’d torn it apart and Teddy and Miles’d spent the better part of Thursday night reassembling the pieces. He’s in his pajamas, one pant leg rolled up to his knee to keep from catching on the electronic ankle bracelet. 

He’s finishing a text message when they wander in, and despite himself, Bruce smiles slightly. “Billy?” he asks.

Teddy nods a little before he ditches the phone on the bedside table. In the dim half-light from the bedside lamp, he looks a full ten years older than when he’d left them after dinner Wednesday night; stubble covers his cheeks and chin, and dark circles stand out under his eyes. He rubs at them as Bruce hovers in the doorway.

Tony, on the other hand, slides right past Bruce and drops into Teddy’s desk chair. The teen rolls his eyes at that, almost smiling, and Bruce just shakes his head. “He holding up?” Tony asks. When Teddy’s brow creases, Tony jerks his head toward the phone. “Your main squeeze. He surviving this whole whirlwind, or should we send him a Xanax gift basket?”

Teddy snorts. “Do you want the real answer, or the fake one?”

Tony shrugs. “As real as you’re willing to give us.”

“Then Billy needs three Xanax gift baskets, plus parents who at least leave the room before talking about teenagers and personality disorders.” Bruce jerks a little in surprise while Tony releases a noise that’s somewhere between a scoff and a gag. Teddy shakes his head. “It’s okay,” he says unconvincingly. “They’re mostly good people, but with this, I think they’re just—”

“Jackasses with their heads all the way up some orifice that need not be named?” Tony suggests sharply.

“Scared,” Teddy answers, and he sounds so small and heartbroken that Bruce’s whole body aches.

They spend a few more minutes with Teddy, talking about a wide variety of things that have precious little to do with his arrest—his schoolwork, the latest episode of _Game of Thrones_ he’s watched through their streaming HBO subscription, his ongoing attempts to help Miles through algebra. 

“He’s smarter than he wants to admit,” he says about the last one, smiling slightly. “But he’s kind of like America.”

“Too stubborn for his own good?” Tony asks.

“More like afraid that being smart’ll make him a weirdo.” Tony snorts a little, but Teddy shuts him up with a half-hearted shrug. “Not everybody’s good at wearing their brains on their sleeve. He’ll figure out that smart’s kind of sexy.”

“Or he won’t,” Bruce says quietly. Tony shoots him a sharp glance, and he runs his fingers through his already messy hair. “Some kids never grow out of the ‘smart isn’t cool phase,’” he reminds his husband. “I run into about two a semester at the law school. He’s not guaranteed to grow out of it.”

“I don’t know,” Teddy chimes in thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure he’ll get there. I mean, he has you guys as dads.”

Something deep in Bruce’s stomach aches again, almost like the softest part of his belly’s folding in on itself, and he’s still trying to force himself to swallow around that sharp spike of emotion when the doorbell rings. Tony hops off the desk chair to go answer the door—it’s probably just Steve and Bucky, come to collect their wayward, sugar-high daughter—but Bruce lingers. He watches Teddy as he fiddles with his phone, his shoulders so broad and still so slumped under his sweatshirt, his face too young and too old at the same time.

“We’ll figure this out,” Bruce finally says, and the sound of his own voice surprises him. Teddy’s head jerks up, the same kind of surprise playing across his expression, and Bruce releases a slow, shaky breath. It’s a breath he feels like he’s held for the last forty-eight hours, a breath that leaves him feeling empty. “I don’t know how, exactly,” he continues, “but between Tony’s bottomless capacity for faith and Sif’s talent in the courtroom, we’ll— We’ll get there, somehow.”

Teddy dips his head back down to his cell phone. “You didn’t mention yourself in all that, you know,” he points out.

Bruce rolls his lips together. “I think I just have faith in you,” he admits, and he watches Teddy swallow thickly a few times before he leaves to go help with the girls.

At it happens, the girls are both dead to the world, chocolate smeared around their mouths as the television’s sleep screen bounces around the display. Bucky balances an exhausted Dot on one hip while Tony scoops Amy up to carry her to bed, and for a few seconds, Bruce can’t help but just _watch_. There’s something unspeakably natural about the way Tony arranges Amy in his arms, her face nuzzled against his neck and her fingers clinging to his t-shirt, and somehow, Bruce loses himself in that simple gesture. She murmurs sleepy nonsense into Tony’s skin as they slip out the bedroom door, and Tony presses his nose to her curls.

A few feet away, Bucky smirks. “You’ve got it bad,” he says, and Bruce purposely rolls his eyes at that. “There’s no shame in it. First time I caught Steve cuddling Dot like that, I almost lost it, too.”

“First time I cuddled Dot like that, it was because you wouldn’t get out of bed to deal with the crying baby,” Steve points out as he walks into the room. Dot’s tiny pink backpack looks ridiculous hanging over one of his shoulders, but he ignores it—and Bucky’s scowl—to lean over and kiss his husband on the temple. “Ready to go?”

“We’re gonna have to talk about how you misremember things,” Bucky grumbles, and Bruce isn’t sure whether it’s that or Steve’s big, sunny grin that leaves him laughing.

By the time Ganke’s mother drops Miles off after the movie, Teddy and Amy are both in their respective beds: the former after a brief hug and some whispered thanks, the latter after much grumbling about needing to change into her pajamas. There’s a stupid movie on the living room television, one that Tony’s half-watching while Bruce dozes (his fingers carding through Tony’s hair—constant, easy comfort), and Miles walks over and throws himself into one of the chairs. 

“Good night?” Tony asks from where his head’s pillowed on Bruce’s shoulder.

Miles shrugs and lolls his head back against the chair, his eyes trained up at the ceiling. After a few long seconds, he asks, “Do girls ever get less confusing?”

Bruce chuckles. “I’m not sure what the issue is,” he says, “but you might want to give your girl friends a little more credit.”

“Or ask somebody who’s seeking out long-term relationships with the ladies for help with them,” Tony suggests with a shrug. When Bruce glances over at him, he raises his hands in self-defense. “I’m not saying our monumental level of queer erases our ability to help him with his girl problems, I’m saying there are probably more qualified people to talk about the present state of lady-affairs. Like, I don’t know, Rhodey.”

Miles wrinkles his nose. “Can I talk to Natasha instead?”

Bruce raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you asking because you have a crush on her, or because you really want her advice?” he questions. Next to him, Tony snickers loud enough that he absolutely deserves an elbow to the ribs.

Their son, on the other hand, drops his eyes to the floor and picks at a loose thread on the chair’s armrest. “Can it be, like, half-and-half?” he asks.

This time, Tony’s snicker is a full-out laugh, and Miles shifts around in the chair just enough to pick up the throw pillow and lob it at his head. He hits both Tony _and_ Bruce, skewing Bruce’s glasses and nearly knocking an empty coffee mug off the table, but when Bruce glances over, Miles’s grinning. It’s a genuine grin, warm enough that lights up his whole face, and Bruce realizes exactly how much he’s missed those grins in the last few weeks of chaos.

Tony raises the pillow, ready to fling it back, but Bruce holds out a hand. “Tony,” he warns, and yet his husband’s eyes _still_ flick back and forth between the projectile, their grinning son, and Bruce’s serious face. He heaves a sigh before he hands it over, and in the armchair, Miles’s expression softens slightly.

Miles never even notices the pillow coming until it hits him squarely in the middle of the chest.

Bruce is surprised that his laughter—bright, shocked, delighted laughter—doesn’t wake the whole house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to be behind on comments. I will attempt to actually claw through them this weekend.
> 
> The posting schedule is a little uncertain right now as I start to wrap up Chain of Custody. I will be updating said schedule probably around the time this story next updates, because by then, I should know what exactly it's planning to do to me.


	14. More Than We Can Give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce must learn how to be thankful when his whole life—and his household—feels like it’s full of fear and doubt. And what’s worse, he has to learn it while also figuring out what he can and can’t trust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my glorious beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who caught all of my random extra spaces. Seriously, there were like a dozen places where I'd inserted extra spaces between words. Go figure.

“You owe me ten bucks,” Clint informs Natasha as Bruce walks up to their usual booth, and he swears audibly as Natasha stomps on his foot.

Bruce shakes the last few half-hearted flakes of early snow from his hair as he slides onto the empty bench across from them and accepts the beer Clint nudges in his direction. It’s dark and rich, a winter beer, and it tingles warmly all the way down into his belly. There’s a half-full tray of spinach dip and a healthy glob of guacamole waiting, too, and he helps himself to a pita chip.

The whole time, Natasha’s eyes burn a hole into the top of his head. When he glances up at her, she purses her lips. “We thought with everything going on—”

Bruce shrugs. “I almost didn’t come,” he admits, scraping the chip through the guacamole, “but I think, more than anything, I needed a break from home.”

The High Bar is quiet and more than half empty, just one of the many casualties of the university’s Thanksgiving break. A notice at their table—printed on bright orange paper and embellished with a peppy clip-art cornucopia—warns patrons that the bar will close early on Wednesday night but open before noon on Friday. _A gift to Black Friday shoppers and their husbands_ , the fine print jokes, the sentencing ending with a winky-face emoticon.

Bruce studies it as he sips his beer.

His class’d fallen victim to the holiday and to the late November snow flurries, too, leaving him in an enormous classroom with only a half-dozen overzealous second-year students. “Maybe we could just talk about our papers,” one’d suggested, her ponytail frizzy from being caught out in the almost snow. “The final copy’s due so quick after break, and a couple of us are still pretty confused . . . ”

She’d trailed off, her friends nodding eagerly, and Bruce’d rolled his lips together. He’d glanced down at his familiar notes—notes about criminal procedure as it relates to juvenile offender cases, he’d realized belatedly, including an in-class debate about trying teens as adults—before he’d shoved them into his bag. 

“What can I help you with?” he’d asked around the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and they’d spent two hours discussing research streams, economy of language, and Bluebook citations.

It’d been the most distracting, most relaxing two hours of the last week.

Beer and pub food with his friends come in at a close second.

As he sets down his glass, his beer already almost a third of the way empty, Clint crosses his arms over his chest. “I figured you’d show up,” he says confidently, and Natasha jabs him in the ribs with an elbow. He grunts and scowls. “What? I told you this morning, he’d want an hour’s peace from the weird _Law & Order_ episode he’s living.”

Natasha snorts and rolls her eyes. “You,” she says, tipping her wine glass at him, “are a horrible friend.”

“A friend who’s right, you mean,” Clint brags. When he reaches for the basket of chips, Natasha slides it out of range. He screws up his face at her. “Hide the chips all you want, it doesn’t make me wrong.”

“It doesn’t,” Bruce agrees quietly, and Natasha’s hand stills momentarily before she moves the basket back into the center of the table. 

Clint dives into the remaining spinach dip like a starving teenager might, but at his side, Natasha rolls her lips together. She’s in a sweater and jeans, her curls pulled back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of her neck, and without her usual careful makeup and bright red lipstick, she looks _young_. Bruce forgets sometimes that Natasha’s one of the youngest attorneys in their office; she’s so brilliant and fearless, he assumes she’s closer to Clint’s age—and sometimes, even closer to his own. She sips her wine, replaces the glass on the table, helps herself to a sliver of pita chip—and never looks away from Bruce.

The longer they stare each other down, the more her expression softens.

He drops his eyes down to his beer glass and sweeps condensation off the side. “It’s as bad as you think,” he admits quietly.

Clint swallows audibly. “The stuff with Teddy, or—”

“All of it,” Bruce breaks in. Clint swigs from his beer, suddenly silent, and Bruce sighs as he shakes his head. “We’re out of our depth, and I— I’m trying not to be petrified.”

There’s a long, tense beat of silence before Natasha murmurs, “You’re allowed to be petrified.”

A bubble of something—fear, maybe, or barely controlled panic, hysteria, or exhaustion—rises up from Bruce’s belly, and for a split second, he almost laughs. “Not when I’m not the one who’s facing three felony murder charges,” he replies, “and not when there are two other kids in the house who need the adults in their life to hold it together until at least some of the dust settles.”

Quiet stretches between them, a wall that builds itself higher and higher as Bruce finishes off the last of the guacamole. He’s aware that his friends are watching them over the rims of their glasses, a tactic he recognizes from his law school interviewing class (and once experienced himself as a recalcitrant six-year-old in court-ordered therapy): create a heavy silence and wait, patiently, for the nervier party to fill it.

He resists the urge to talk, sipping his beer as the waitress brings them refills and a fresh dish of spinach dip. He even resists through the awful Black Friday commercial playing on the TV behind the bar despite the fact that Tony’s sung its obnoxious jingle every morning for the last two weeks. He resists until his nerves feel like they’re buzzing audibly under his skin and his fingers can’t help dancing against the side of his pint glass, twitchy and entirely out of his control.

Finally, he sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning?” Clint suggests. Natasha pulls her elbow back to jab him, but he catches her arm and holds her at bay. “Okay, first? Maria just sent the workplace violence policy back around after the incident with Darcy and the office supply crossbow. You _had_ to have read it.”

Natasha quirks an eyebrow. “And who taught Darcy how to make a crossbow?”

“She _wanted_ to make a blow gun. I did us all a favor.” She rolls her eyes, and Clint grins as he reaches for his beer. “And second,” he continues, “we’ve barely seen Bruce or Stark since this happened. They’re holed up in their offices all the time. I just figured—”

Bruce raises a hand. “The beginning’s as good a place as any,” he says, and Clint’s cocky smirk is cut short by Natasha unsubtly kicking him under the table. He swears under his breath, and for a brief moment, Bruce nearly smiles. He sips his beer, a half-second stall before he pulls in a long breath. “You’ve heard about the charges against Teddy and the special prosecutor trying the case, right?”

“You mean the guy with the limp and the bad attitude?” Clint asks.

“Mike Peterson,” Natasha supplies. She shrugs when Bruce blinks in surprise. “I interned at the attorney general’s office in the summer before my third year,” she explains as she reaches for a few more chips. “Even then, he was a legend in that office. Some of the interns called him Data, like from _Star Trek_.”

Clint chokes on a mouthful of beer. From the way he crinkles his nose, Bruce suspects he’s inhaled some of it. “You know _Star Trek_?”

“I know a lot of things,” Natasha reminds him. He rolls his eyes even as he releases a wet cough, and she waves him off. “They thought he was a machine pretending to be a man,” she continues, glancing back to Bruce, “especially after what happened to him.”

Bruce frowns. “Something happened?”

She narrows her eyes, but not enough to hide the flash of obvious surprise that races across her expression. “You don’t know?”

“People aren’t exactly in a hurry to give us the inside scoop,” Bruce reminds her. Her mouth quirks into a tiny grin as she sips her wine. “Seriously, all I could find online was his bar registration number and an award he won a few years back, not—”

“Do you remember that bridge explosion, what, fifteen years ago? In Marshall County?”

Bruce purses his lips together as he tries to remember anything about bridge explosions in the weeks and months before he left for India, but before he can knit the pieces together, Clint releases a long whistle. “You mean that construction accident, right?” he asks. “The one where they fucked something up and killed a couple people?”

“Right,” Natasha answers. She leans forward, her arms on the table, and focuses the whole of her attention on Bruce. “A construction company building a new bridge over the river—the bridge that replaced the old Crenshaw Bridge, if you ever crossed it—tried to expedite the process by ignoring state and federal safety regulations,” she tells him, “and the end result was an explosion that killed three workers and injured a few dozen more. One or two even lost limbs.” She pauses, her fingers curling around the stem of her glass. “The company covered medical bills and funerals, but the injured workers wanted their pound of flesh. The attorney general refused to prosecute the company as strenuously as it could. They got away with a slap on the wrist and a handful of fines.”

Bruce studies her for a moment, his brow tightening. “Mike Peterson’s too young to have been part of the prosecution team,” he points out.

Natasha lifts her wine glass. “He’s not too young to have lost part of a leg in the explosion,” she replies, “or to want to be attorney general in another five to six years.”

She sips her wine then, her eyes drifting to glance out the window at the still-falling flurries, and Bruce sighs as he rubs a hand over his face. He’d wondered about Mike Peterson and his amazing conviction record—he’d googled the man, after all—but for some reason, learning more about him settles like a stone in Bruce’s stomach. “He’s like a dog with a bone, isn’t he?”

Natasha nods. “From what I’ve heard.”

Next to her, Clint frowns as he sets his beer bottle back on its coaster. “You seeing that from him already?”

“More or less,” Bruce says. He leans back in the booth and pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment. “He’s filed a motion to change venue that, from what we can tell, alleges that Tony and I are too well-known in the community to allow the State a fair crack at a conviction,” he explains, willfully ignoring Clint’s full-body flinch. “Sif’s worried he’ll win it—or, worse, use it as a way to gum up the prosecution for another year or so. Some of the witnesses are kids and teenagers. Their memories’ll fade.”

“And by ‘some of the witnesses,’ you mean kids like Kate Bishop and that crew,” Clint guesses.

“And Amy, yes,” Bruce replies, and across the table, Clint nods. “He’s started turning over some discovery to Sif, but it’s mostly useless. The cell phone records look incomplete, the social work records are missing documents . . . I think Sif might’ve made Leo Fitz cry, she was so angry.”

Clint snorts a laugh. “From what I can tell, he’s not exactly made of Teflon,” he says.

“Kevlar,” Natasha corrects.

“You want me to just say he’s made outta tissue paper? I can go with tissue paper.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at him, and for the first time in what feels like days, Bruce chuckles. It feels good, like a part of his body’s finally untangling from the Gordian knot that lives in the pit of his stomach. Clint grins at him, and the corner of Natasha’s mouth twitches in some semblance of a smile.

At least, until Bruce shakes his head again. “It’s mostly in shambles,” he admits, “and what’s worse is I’m not sure who to trust anymore.”

Natasha purses her lips. “About what?” she asks carefully.

Bruce swallows. “About Teddy.”

The words settle heavily around them, a lead weight that lands in the middle of their table and brings with it several long, stressful moments of silence. Bruce finishes off his beer and drags his fingers through his hair again, fluffing up the curls while Clint and Natasha—two of his best friends, two people who know almost all his secrets—stare blankly at him. They’re words he’s not admitted aloud to anyone, not even to Tony, and for some reason, they hurt.

Silence builds between them as the waitress sidles up to their table and leaves fresh drinks in her wake. Bruce reaches for the new glass, and the cold covers his arms in gooseflesh.

He stares at his hand instead of at either of his friends. “He’s withdrawn,” he says quietly, and the words stick in his throat. “He’s following the terms of the house arrest, but he’s— He’s a different kid than when he came to us. I thought he might shrink away from me and Tony—I prepared for that—but he’s holding everyone at arm’s length. Sif, Jessica, Amy, Miles, his friends . . . ” He releases a long breath before he glances across the table. “He’s a completely different kid.”

Natasha’s head bobs slightly as she reaches for her wine, her head dipping to hide the bare-faced concern that rushes across her expression, but Clint just shrugs. “The juvenile system’s a shitstorm on a good day,” he says, gesturing lightly with his bottle. “Makes sense that he’d be bracing himself against that.”

“But it’s not just that,” Bruce returns, and Clint frowns. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I think there’s more going on.”

Natasha glances up at him, her eyes worried but also careful and considerate. “Because that’s what your gut tells you?” she asks.

“That, and just the way both Amy and Miles are acting.” She nods slightly, and he sighs before he leans forward and rests his arms on the table as Natasha had only a few minutes earlier. “I overheard Teddy and Miles having a conversation a week or two ago,” he admits, his glass still pressed between his palms. “It was late and they tried to keep their voices down, but Teddy was asking Miles to look after Amy if anything happened to him. To sort of fill his role as her big brother.” 

“Jesus,” Clint intones, and swigs from his beer bottle.

Bruce huffs out a breath. “No kidding,” he replies, and he watches as Natasha stares back down at her glass again. He rolls his lips together and drops his own eyes down to his beer. “Amy’s in pieces,” he continues, “and as hard as we’re trying, nothing seems to help. If she’s not crying, she’s throwing tantrums about things that have never been an issue: her bath, her bedtime, sending Dot home for the night, finishing her homework . . . At her after-school program yesterday, she refused to do any of the activities and just sat against the wall in the gym. Dot joined her for part of it, but she’s—” He releases another long, shaky breath as the words catch in the back of his throat. “She’s not okay, and every time she tries to go to Teddy, he nudges her in Miles’s direction and closes himself in his room.”

Clint snorts. “And I’m sure your kid loves being on sister duty every damn day.”

“I think ‘sister duty’ is the only thing keeping him from falling apart, too.” 

Bruce turns his glass around in his hands for a moment, then glances across the table. Clint’s watching him carefully, his beer bottle dangling idly from one hand as he leans against the back of the booth, but Natasha’s looking out the window and studying the tiny flakes that dance on the November wind. He’s seen that distant look in her eyes before, the one that suggests someone’s toed too close to her scars for comfort, and he traces the quiet worry that’s caught in her expression before he shakes his head.

“He’s trying harder than we are to put on a brave face,” he finally admits, and for some reason, that’s what pulls Natasha’s attention away from the window. “He’s scared, but he— I think he’s more worried about Amy being scared than he is about himself. Last night, she woke up crying again, and he beat us into her room to comfort her.” He tries to force a smile, but he feels it falter immediately. “I think Amy gives him a reason to keep it together.”

“And your reason?” Natasha asks. Bruce pauses, his glass halfway to his lips, but she just shrugs lightly. “You’re here,” she points out, “and you seem— Well, mostly yourself. Mostly okay.” He snorts a little as he sips his beer, but her eyes never leave his face. “What’s your reason for keeping it together?”

“You mean besides the three terrified children and one terrified husband in my house?” Bruce retorts, and Natasha rolls her lips together. He sighs as he sets his glass back on the table. “Jessica and Sif need someone who can keep a cool head,” he says after a few more seconds. “The kids need someone who can remember to pack lunches and pick them up from school. And Tony’s capable of it, I know he is, but his fuse’s so short that I . . . ” 

The end of the sentence escapes him, and he tips his head down toward his glass. “It’s like a pilot light,” he murmurs.

Across from him, Clint leans forward, elbows on the table. “What is?”

“This feeling, the fear or anger or whatever it is, it just— It lives in the pit of my stomach, and it’s always on. Always burning.” He draws in a breath, unsurprised when it shakes, and releases it slowly. “We’ve sat up the last three nights and tried to come up with ways to help all three of them, to make the situation less volatile, for lack of a better word. Taking a trip—which we can’t do, not with Teddy’s charges—or just creating some sort of relaing ‘stay-cation.’ Spending a few days out of the house or a few days inside in pajamas playing Rock Band. Throwing the biggest Thanksgiving in the history of our office or cancelling it entirely. But none of the ideas stick.”

“How about you cancel our Thanksgiving instead, and we’ll come to yours?” Clint asks, and next to him, Natasha rolls her eyes. He holds up his hands. “Hey, listen, I love the sisters,” he defends, “but we’re at critical mass with the wedding stuff, and it’s exhausting.”

“They shot down his purple flowers,” Natasha says with a tiny smirk.

“Because they’re bossy and have absolutely no taste, yeah,” Clint agrees. When Bruce huffs a laugh, he points his beer bottle across the table. “We really should’ve taken a page from you and Stark’s book and eloped to one of the courtrooms.”

“Only if Phil sprang it on you without warning,” Bruce reminds him, and Clint’s grin is warm and bright.

A half-hour later, Natasha picks up the tab—or rather, the waitress appears and delivers the bill straight into Natasha’s hands, no questions asked—and they emerge from the bar into the bitterly cold November night. Clint, who’s spent the last ten minutes exchanging text messages with Phil, tosses a quick goodnight over his shoulder before he jogs toward his hatchback. “Should we play ‘argument or sex?’” Bruce asks.

Natasha grins at him. “We only started that game because of how you used to rush home to Tony.”

Bruce laughs lightly, his whole body warm despite the cold November wind. “We were newlyweds,” he reminds her, and he smiles when she snorts at him. He feels a few pounds lighter from talking to his friends, like he might be able to endure the span of days between now and the trial on Peterson’s motion. The snowflakes, which still don’t stick to anything other than the occasional windshield, glitter under the streetlights. 

He’s studying them, his face tipped up to the cloudy sky, when Natasha touches his arm. “Don’t cancel Thanksgiving,” she says. Bruce blinks at her, his lips parting, and she holds up her free hand. “I know you probably won’t, if only because Tony loves to throw a party, but I can’t help thinking that it’s maybe what your family needs. What _Miles_ needs.”

Bruce releases a huff of cloudy breath. “A house full of his parents’ coworkers?”

“Normalcy.” She shakes her head, a few curls falling out of her ponytail, and stares out into the parking lot. “You and I both had lives that got turned upside down by things outside our control,” she reminds him softly, and he rolls his lips together. “We both know what it’s like to scramble for something that feels normal. Something that feels like the lives we lost.” When she finally meets his eyes, her expression’s soft and thoughtful. “They need a little bit of that.”

“They need more than we can give them,” Bruce replies. She raises her eyebrows almost reproachfully, and he glances away. “Amy needs Teddy, Teddy’s not talking to anyone, and Miles is only holding himself together because the alternative’s even worse. Tony and I are messy enough on our best days that this is—”

“You’re not messy,” Natasha interrupts, and when Bruce rolls his eyes at that, she squeezes his arm tightly enough that he can feel the crescents of her nails through his coat. He raises his head, expecting to see anger flitting across her expression; instead, her face is open and almost a little sad. “You’re orphans with scars that most people can’t see. You’ve both seen lifetimes worth of loss and pain, and you’ve both come out swinging. There’s something to be said for that.”

Bruce feels the corner of his mouth kick upward slightly. “That doesn’t really fix how helpless this all feels,” he points out.

She grins. “Most parents feel that kind of helplessness every day. You’re just feeling it with the dial turned up to eleven.”

He snorts at that, nearly rolling his eyes, and she pats his arm before releasing it. She’s halfway across the parking lot when she twists back around and sends him a dazzling grin. “Pepper’s making that cranberry salad for Thursday, by the way,” she calls out.

Bruce groans. “Are you just hoping we’ll have Thanksgiving so you don’t have to actually eat it?” he asks, and Natasha laughs and waves over her shoulder.

He waits for her quick little car to zip out of the parking lot before he finally climbs into the Prius, his hair and shoulders once again damp from the few persistent snowflakes that continue to fall. They glimmer in his headlights as he drives home, twinkling like early Christmas lights. He loops around the long way, enjoying the stillness of the night for just a little longer, his thoughts calm and settled for the first time in ages.

For the first time since Teddy’s arrest, he thinks. But then, he remembers that his constant, gnawing worry started long before then, with Munroe and Howlett’s interrogations, with Amy’s initial fear of Miles, and with the fire.

The fire that still, weeks later, casts a persistent, thick shadow over their lives. 

The rare peace is unceremoniously broken when Bruce turns into their driveway and finds Jessica Jones’s sedan parked near the front door. His heart drops heavily into his stomach, sinking like a stone, and he skips the garage to park behind her in the circle drive. The car’s cold and empty, a sure sign she’d arrived long before Bruce, and for a moment, he just stares.

They’ve barely spoken since Teddy’s first court appearance, and every hasty e-mail about social work records or the upcoming venue haring have felt like harbingers of doom. The fact that she’s _there_ , at his home and with his family, means—

Bruce releases a long breath and drags his fingers through his hair.

He refuses to finish the thought.

He tries to creep in silently, but he’s barely closed and locked the front door behind him before Amy’s barreling down the stairs and throwing herself into his grip. “You’re home!” she announces, her voice so full of delight that Bruce can’t help but smile. She’s already in her pajamas, her hair damp and messy from her bath, and she pushes unruly curls from her face to beam up at him. “Tony said I could stay up all the way until you got home.”

Bruce chuckles. “I’m sure he did,” he replies, and Amy giggles before she plasters herself to his side. She hides her face against his coat as he toes off his shoes and against his shirt as he strips off his coat, and Bruce—

He hooks his coat over the closet’s doorknob before he slips out of Amy’s grip enough to crouch down in front of her. Something in her expression crumples slowly, and when she averts her eyes, he sweeps hair away from her cheeks. “Rough night?” he asks quietly.

She nods. “Teddy’s in his room.”

“Did he come out of his room?”

“Not since you left after dinner.” She curls her bare toes against the tile floor, her lips rolling together. “He didn’t want to help me with homework. Miles had to help.”

Bruce forces a little smile. “Miles helps a lot lately, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Amy admits, but the word sounds mostly like a sigh. When she glances over, her lips still pressed into a tight line, she looks shy and worried all at once. “But I miss Teddy.”

He snorts a little and strokes her cheek with a thumb. “I know, sweetheart,” he says gently, and this time when Amy falls into his grip, it’s with arms around his neck.

He ends up scooping her up and carrying her into the kitchen with him, her face half-hidden in his shoulder and her hair surrounding him with the scent of detangling shampoo and bubble bath. He’s not surprised, exactly, to find Tony sitting on the island with a cup of coffee in his hand, or to catch Miles bent over the last of his homework. What he’s surprised by is—

“Before you accuse me of once again shirking my very important parental duties, she offered,” Tony says, his free hand gesturing idly toward the breakfast nook. Jessica Jones sits across from Miles, a pencil twisted in her long hair. She’s squinting at his algebra book, but she pauses just long enough to roll her eyes at Tony. “Miles complained, Teddy’s on another of his weird, self-imposed lockdowns—featuring the original cast recording of _Les Miserables_ , which also helps to sum up his mood—and Jessica offered to play math tutor in his place.”

“Really,” Bruce deadpans.

“She actually helps a lot,” Miles volunteers, his pencil still scratching across the paper. He glances up briefly, his eyes catching Bruce’s as Bruce rounds the island—and rolling when Bruce leans into Tony’s personal speech and leeches some of his heat. “She makes math easier.”

“Said the adorable thirteen-year-old to his engineer-and-physicist parents, thus soundly breaking their hearts,” Tony retorts. Miles scowls as he returns to his homework, and Bruce hides his little grin in Amy’s hair. “We’ve got four post-secondary science degrees between us and he’d still rather work with the licensed master of social work. It’s betrayal.”

“Or it’s a response to the fact that you _explain_ things like you’ve got four advanced degrees between you,” Jessica cuts in. Tony huffs into his coffee, but Jessica simply shrugs. “If you talked less like scientists, maybe he could learn it from you.”

Tony opens his mouth to protest—at least, until Bruce replies, “You know, she has a point.” When Tony’s jaw snaps shut, it’s coupled with a glare. “It’s probably easier to learn from someone who hasn’t spent half their adult lives doing high-level math.”

Tony snorts. “You,” he declares, “are the worst husband I’ve ever had.”

Bruce rolls his eyes at that, but not before Miles lifts his head again. “Isn’t he your only husband?” he asks, frowning.

Jessica taps his math book. “You have three more problems,” she reminds him, and he grumbles as he starts in on the next equation. “And besides, I could see him running off to Vegas.”

Miles smirks as he starts fiddling with the problem. “Or marrying somebody in Europe and forgetting about it,” he offers, and grins when Jessica interrupts his homework for a victorious little high-five.

Bruce frowns at the two of them, and the way Miles holds onto his grin even as he works through his assignment. “I’m not sure I like the tone of this conversation anymore,” he admits after another few seconds. 

Tony shrugs. “It’s not like I wouldn’t divorce my European spouse for you,” he says.

“That’s not particularly reassuring, Tony,” Bruce replies, and when Tony winks at him, he steals his coffee mug and finishes off the last of his coffee.

By the time he sets the mug in the sink, Amy’s nearly asleep on his shoulder, her breathing slow and warm against his neck. When he glances over at Tony, Tony mouths _go_ and jerks his head in the direction of the stairs; when Bruce raises his eyebrows in surprise, his husband’s gaze flicks in their son’s direction. Miles’s pencil is clutched between his teeth as he studies an example in his textbook with the help of Jessica’s murmured instructions. Whatever conversation they’re waiting on, then, is a private one, without half-asleep seven-year-olds or nosy teenagers.

Bruce swallows thickly before he nods. _Okay_ , he mouths back, and if he squeezes Tony’s knee before he carries Amy upstairs, well, it’s not like anyone needs to know.

Amy only really wakes up after Bruce’s settled her into bed, and he finishes arranging the sheets and blankets around her while she tucks Joey under her chin. He feels her eyes at his back as he checks the window locks and switches on the nightlight. He smiles at her when he turns back around to officially say goodnight. “I’ll owe you an extra story tomorrow, since Miss Jones is here,” he promises, “but in the meantime—”

“Is something bad happening?” 

The question’s so clear and pointed that it catches Bruce entirely off-guard, and for the first few beats, all he can do is blink uncomprehendingly. Amy huffs a breath and presses her face into her stuffed kangaroo, her eyes focusing on the nearest corner of the bedroom rather than on Bruce’s face. “Miss Jessica only comes when bad things happen,” she says after a couple seconds, her voice muffled by Joey. “She always brings bad news.”

“Not always,” Bruce assures her, but the words catch suspiciously. Amy sends him a suspicious glance, and he forces a smile. “She needs to visit to check on you and Teddy,” he reminds her, “and with everything that’s happened lately, it’s really important that she makes sure you’re both okay. You understand that, right?”

She nods slightly, just one uneven bob of her head, and Bruce feels his shoulders loosen as he reaches out to stroke her hair. She relaxes at that, her head finally settling on the pillow. She’s craved touch in the last few days—hugs, cuddles, tickle-fights, goodnight kisses. Bruce wonders just how many of Teddy’s bear-hugs and hair-ruffles she’s missed in the last week. 

He’s not sure he can count that high.

“I miss how it was when you first became my extra family,” Amy says suddenly, her voice sleepy but clear. For a split second, Bruce swears his heart stops. The girl’s eyes are closed, her arms loosely clutching her favorite toy, but the way she frowns when Bruce stops smoothing her hair proves that she’s not totally asleep. “Teddy’s sad and scared, Miles pretends he’s not sad and scared but he is, and you and Tony aren’t funny anymore.” She cracks one tired eye to peer up at Bruce. “I miss when it was all fun.”

Bruce knows without thinking that the smile he offers her is weak, tiny, and sad. “Me too,” he admits, and he leans down to kiss her goodnight.

She rolls over once he shuts off the light, her back to the door and her body curled protectively around Joey (and, he thinks, into itself), and even though Bruce knows he should head back downstairs, he can’t help but stand in the doorway and watch her fall asleep. She looks tiny in the near-dark, and the longer he watches her back rise and fall, the more he imagines her as a girl made of glass, teetering on a high shelf.

In danger of falling and breaking into a million pieces that they can’t glue back together, he thinks, and his heart aches. 

She deserves so much better than that.

Back in the kitchen, Miles is packing up his backpack and bantering with Jessica about the evils of algebra while the kettle boils. Bruce smiles at the strange, almost comforting domesticity of the scene—and again when Tony crowds up behind him and molds to his back. “She okay?” he asks quietly against Bruce’s neck, and Bruce can’t help but shake his head. Tony squeezes him tightly around the waist. “We’ll drink some magic tea, we’ll talk with Jess, and then we’ll deal with healing the rest of the household’s wounds.”

Bruce snorts slightly. “Just like that?”

“Absolutely,” Tony returns, and leans forward to plant a kiss on the curve of Bruce’s jaw.

Still standing at the breakfast nook, Miles groans audibly. “They’re literally always like this,” he informs Jessica. When he gestures toward his parents, Tony purposely makes loud smooching noises against Bruce’s neck until Bruce bats him away. “Isn’t this some form of child abuse, making me watch this?”

“Just be glad your folks _like_ each other,” Jessica returns, and Miles laughs when she pretends to cuff him in the back of the head.

Miles leaves his backpack and retreats up to bed, but not before he offers each of his parents a brief side-hug. Tony rubs a hand over their son’s head before he releases him, but Bruce just lingers, his fingers spreading along Miles’s side like he hopes to hold onto him forever. Miles apparently feels the same way, because he lolls his head against Bruce’s shoulder for a few seconds. Like he’s afraid to let go, Bruce thinks, and he presses a kiss to Miles’s hairline before he finally releases him.

“You’re such a dad,” Miles grumbles, but he smiles, too.

“You trained both of us well,” Bruce reminds him, and he runs his hand down Miles’s back before he shoos him up to bed.

By the time he’s upstairs, wasting gallons of water as he gets ready for bed—he likes to text his entire circle of friends goodnight while he brushes his teeth, but he always forgets to turn off the tap—Tony’s poured three cups of tea and set them on the table. Jessica flops into her seat and smells it before she scowls. “Can I spike this?”

“Depends on if you’re trying to drink us out of house and home or if it’s incidental,” Tony retorts.

She rolls her eyes. “Because drinking your ten-year-old fireball whisky is a personal life goal of mine.”

“Just for that, you don’t get any,” Tony informs her snottily, and Bruce grabs his hand before he can jab a finger across the table at her. 

She snorts a little laugh as she reaches for the mug, and within seconds, an uncomfortable silence sweeps across the kitchen. If he listens closely, Bruce can hear the thin strains of the _Les Miserables_ soundtrack drifting out from behind Teddy’s closed bedroom door, punctuated occasionally by one or both of the dogs trailing after Miles upstairs, but otherwise, the house feels as quiet and as stuffy as a tomb. 

Bruce turns his mug around in his hands. Across the table, Jessica pulls the pencil out of her hair. It tumbles down around her shoulders, hiding her face as she helps herself to another sip of her tea.

Finally, Tony sighs and rubs a hand over his goatee. “The way I see it,” he says, his tone aggressively casual, “you’re either here with really good news or really bad news.”

The corner of Jessica’s mouth kicks up into a tiny smile. “I’d say it was neutral, but you’d just accuse me of lying.”

Tony frowns. “That bad?”

“It’s just,” she starts, but she stops herself with a shake of her head. For a few seconds, she drops her eyes to her tea and worries her lower lip between her teeth. Bruce knows from experience that she’s fighting for the right words.

He can also count the number of times he’s watched her struggle this way on one hand.

“Jessica,” he says softly, and she drags her hand through her hair. “Whatever it is, we—”

“I found Teddy a placement,” she interrupts, her eyes lifting to meet Bruce’s. “In Washington County.”

“You _what_?” Tony demands, and before Bruce can reach for him, he’s on his feet, his fingers digging into his dark hair. Bruce covers his mouth with his hand, his heart hammering in his throat and his head reeling, but it’s Tony who throws up his hands—and who looks as panicked and helpless as Bruce suddenly feels. “You can’t disrupt a kid whose life is on a roller coaster bound for hell and whose only stability involves us, our kid, and Amy,” Tony presses after a few seconds, and Bruce stares down at his hands. “You can’t pull him out of here and just—”

“I might not have a _choice_ ,” Jessica cuts him off. Tony falls silent immediately, and out of the corner of his eye, Bruce watches as his husband’s shoulders soften. Jessica tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been talking to Sif,” she explains, “and she’s worried about this motion to change venue. If Peterson wins and the case gets pulled from this county— We can’t keep Teddy five or six counties away from where his trial’s going to be. We don’t have the time or the resources to drive him all over the state for hearings and evaluations. We need to be proactive.”

“By moving him,” Tony says quietly.

“By being prepared to move him if it comes to that.” Jessica sighs and shakes her head. “Sif wanted to make sure we have somewhere we can send him, and I found a family who—”

“Is prepared to deal with this mess?” Tony asks. When Bruce finally glances over, he finds Tony leaning heavily against the island, his hands on his hips. “Who knows what they’re getting into?”

Jessica shrugs. “They specialize in troubled teens.”

“And that doesn’t answer the question,” Bruce points out. She frowns at him, and he drops his eyes back to his mug. “Jessica, we trust you—”

“That’s maybe putting the cart before a whole line of horses and the guy who drives them,” Tony mutters.

Bruce shoots him a tight look and earns an eye roll in response. He sighs again and rubs a hand over his face. “We trust you,” he repeats, “but if this family isn’t prepared for all the ins and outs of this case, then . . . ”

He trails off, his hands opening a little helplessly, and Jessica rolls her lips together. “I obviously can’t give them the details,” she says after a few seconds, “but they do good work. They’ve had kids end up in the juvenile justice system before, and they’ve always handled it well. They’ll take good care of him.” She pauses, her hands tightening around her mug. “And they offered to take Amy, too, if you’re interested.”

“Amy?” Bruce blurts. A few feet away, Tony scoffs and pushes away from the island, shaking his head as he paces into the living room. For the first couple seconds, Bruce just glances back and forth between his disbelieving husband and his equally worried friend, the words jumbling and twisting together in his mind. His fingers flex around his mug, gripping and releasing it.

In the living room, Tony stares silently at one of the walls before heading back into the kitchen. 

“I’m not saying you need to decide anything today,” Jessica says after a few more seconds, her voice oddly tight as she meets Bruce’s eyes. “I just want you to have all the information available to you now, so it doesn’t sneak up on you later.”

Bruce nods a little, unaware of Tony’s proximity until he drops heavily onto the bench at his side. Bruce offers him a tiny smile, but Tony just shakes his head and sips his own tea. He’s quiet for a moment before his leg starts bouncing agitatedly; he only stops when Bruce reaches out and spreads his hand over his thigh.

Their shoulders bump lightly before Bruce thinks to ask, “Have you told Teddy this?”

Jessica shakes her head. “He’s not exactly an open book lately,” she reminds them bitterly, and Tony snorts instead of responding. “Sif said they have a meeting Saturday afternoon to prepare for the hearing. I’ll go too, tell him about the other placement.”

“He might not be happy about that,” Tony informs her.

“Yeah, well, he might not have a choice, either.” There’s an edge to Jessica’s tone that’s so razor-sharp and _snide_ that Tony’s whole body tightens, but she quickly raises a hand. “He’s backing us into a corner,” she defends, and Bruce watches as Tony’s fingers curl tightly around the handle of his mug. “I don’t like it any more than you do, and I _don’t_ believe he’s capable of this. I’ve known him for too long and seen him through too much to just go ahead and assume the worst.”

Bruce swallows. “But?”

Jessica runs her fingers through her messy hair. “But I don’t take his story at face value, either,” she admits, “and I don’t know if he’ll come clean in time for Sif to win her motion.”

 

==

 

“They deserve more than this,” Bruce says hours later, once Jessica’s sedan has disappeared down the street and the house is once again dark and silent in the cold November night. All three kids sleep peacefully—they’d discovered that Teddy’d nodded off with his homework spread around him and _Les Miserables_ still playing on repeat—but for some reason, they still lie awake, lit only by touches of ambient light that pour in from outside. Curled up behind him, Tony trails his fingers through Bruce’s chest hair and down his stomach, lazy touches that serve to remind them both that they’re here, together, in the dark.

That they’re a unit. A team, instead of a time bomb.

Bruce finds one of Tony’s hands and links their fingers together, and Tony sighs against the back of his shoulder. 

“I don’t know what really happened, what’s _still_ happening,” he presses, his voice shaking as he presses his face into the pillow, “but I know they need something we can’t give them. I know what they need, the people who can fix this, it’s not—”

The words falter, catching in the back of his throat and nearly choking him, and he fights against them until he hears Tony murmur, “Hey.” Within seconds, he’s flat on his back with Tony propped up over him, his eyes bright and warm even in the low light. He smiles softly at Bruce, and for one split second, Bruce just wants to drown in him. 

He reaches up and touches Tony’s face, like he needs the reminder that his husband’s there and _real_ , and Tony dips his head to kiss his palm.

“What these kids deserve,” he says after a beat, his lips close enough to Bruce’s skin that Bruce can feel every breath, “is being in a house with people who’ll stick around. Who’ll take care of them and protect them and build walls to keep the boogiemen away.” Bruce snorts a little, and Tony grins against his hand. “They deserve people who love them. They’re not going to get that anywhere else.”

Bruce smoothes his thumb over the corner of Tony’s mouth, tracing his smile in the almost-dark. “We can’t fix this if Teddy’s hiding, Tony,” he reminds him. “If we’re fighting an uphill battle, if we’re missing the pieces, if we’re—”

“Fighting blindfolded in the dark with both hands tied behind our backs?” Tony finishes. Even as he snorts, Bruce nods, and Tony’s grin dims a little as he slowly settles back onto the mattress at Bruce’s side. “I don’t know how to turn on the lights and make it easier,” he admits, his arm snaking around Bruce’s middle, “and I don’t know how to squeeze blood from the stone named Teddy Altman. But what I know is that I trust him and Sif and Jessica. And more than that? I trust _us_.”

“That trust won’t stretch very far if Sif loses this motion,” Bruce murmurs.

“And that’s the one bridge I’m only willing to cross when we come to it,” Tony replies, and settles his cheek onto Bruce’s shoulder.

 

==

 

“I _told_ you, Daddy,” Dot informs Bucky, her hands planted on her hips and her face the very model of kindergarten indignation, “we have to put the names down according to the _leaves_.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches like he’s seriously considering laughter, but he maintains his poker face when Dot glares at him. “I’m about ninety percent sure you told your dad about this, not me,” he defends, “but hey, I’m down with your leaf-based seating system.”

“Except you already messed it up,” Dot sneers, and snatches the place cards out of her father’s hands. 

Across the table from the two of them, Bruce rolls his lips together to hide his smile and slides another napkin into a merrily fall-themed napkin ring. Honestly, he’s not sure where all the autumn home goods originated—Tony’d dragged the box out of storage, dusted it off, and dumped it at Miles and Amy’s feet that morning—but he appreciates the fact that the centerpiece, table cloth, and napkins all mostly match. 

The cranberry garland that Miles’d helped Amy string over the doorway and the half-dozen pumpkin- and pine-scented candles are another story, but he keeps those complaints to himself.

“You could tell me what the leaves mean,” Bucky suggests as Dot crawls up onto one of the chairs to arrange the latest place card. They’re four-by-six notecards, folded in half and decorated with a variety of fall stickers: pumpkins, gourds, turkeys, and leaves. The card nearest Bruce reads _Nutasha_ in Dot’s crooked, juvenile handwriting and is covered with orange leaves; two seats down from her, the leaves on his own place card ( _Uncle Brus_ ) are all red. 

Dot straightens the card before she brushes her hair out of her face. “It’s a surprise,” she tells Bucky seriously. “You can’t know about surprises.”

“You let Amy know when she helped you spell everybody’s name,” Bucky points out.

Dot wrinkles her nose. “That’s different,” she reports, and slides off her chair.

Her father shoots Bruce a knowing glance, sparkling grin and all, and Bruce chuckles as he finishes up with the last couple napkins. He’d arranged and rearranged the dining room three times that morning, trying desperately to fit enough tables and chairs into the limited space to seat ten adults and four children. When he’d finally finished, Tony—freshly awake and showered—had wandered up and pressed himself to Bruce’s back.

“I’ll get doughnuts if you start the cooking,” he’d said, his lips close to Bruce’s ear.

Bruce’d snorted and glanced over his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure that was always the plan.”

“Yeah, but I sound extra thoughtful if I phrase it that way,” Tony’d teased, and he’d tasted like toothpaste when Bruce’d slid around to kiss him.

He’d dragged Teddy out for doughnuts with him—half to force him to practice his driving, half to simply force him out of the damn house—leaving Bruce to flick on the radio and start dragging dishes down from various cabinets. He’d hummed along until Amy’d wandered downstairs, sleepy but still excited for a day off school. By the time Tony and Teddy’d returned with two dozen doughnuts—“That’s excessive,” Bruce’d observed, but Tony’d waved him off—Amy’d already asked him a hundred questions about cooking, their guests, and Tony’s permanent kitchen banishment.

“But you can’t do all the work,” Amy’d decided by the end of Bruce’s explanation, powdered sugar smeared on the tip of her nose as she finished her second doughnut. “That’s not fair.”

Tony’d shrugged. “All’s fair in love. Also war, but we only war when you kids are in bed and can’t hear your sainted foster dad roar.” When Teddy’d rolled his eyes, Tony’d pointed his coffee mug at him. “Trust me on this one. You wouldn’t like the big guy when he’s angry.”

“And I’m so shocked your husband could get angry at you,” Teddy’d deadpanned, but the warmth in his voice’d rushed through Bruce’s veins like a shock. He’d helped himself to another doughnut and promptly split it into quarters to give Amy a bite. “If you need help with dinner, I’m kind of okay at cooking.”

“He makes good grilled cheeses,” Amy’d agreed.

“Can we add those to the holiday menu?” Tony’d asked, and Bruce’d rolled his eyes at him over his shoulder. “I take it on good authority that Pepper’s bringing the inedible cranberry salad of despair and gloom. Frankly, I’d rather have grilled cheese.”

Bruce’d shaken his head. “The salad’s not that bad.”

“That salad makes quinoa look like the embodiment of human joy, and _that_ is saying something.” He’d finished off the tail end of his coffee before hopping off the countertop. “Speaking of appropriate holiday décor—”

“When were we speaking about that?” Bruce’d asked, and Teddy’d snorted into his milk.

“—there’s a whole box of holiday crap with your names on it.” He’d jabbed a finger in Amy and Teddy’s direction, and the girl’d grinned at him. “The big guy’ll work his magic while we work ours.”

Bruce’d hidden his grin in his own coffee mug. “Magic might be a bit of a stretch, Tony.”

“It’s not a stretch when you’re fairies,” Amy’d said sincerely, and Teddy’d nearly choked to death on his doughnut. 

As far as Bruce knows, Amy’s still decorating even as they speak, handing out a variety of Thanksgiving buttons (“I don’t know where those came from,” Tony’d defended in a tone that suggested he knew _exactly_ where they came from) to their guests and demanding that Miles stick window clings to every smooth surface in the house. Teddy—freshly showered, shaven, and wearing jeans and a sweater—is helping Tony oversee the finishing touches on dinner.

And Bruce is arranging napkins and wine glasses—and enjoying the first day in weeks that feels warm and joyful, instead of terrifying.

“You hanging in there?” Bucky asks suddenly, and Bruce jerks his head up to find the other man standing at his side, beer in hand. When he blinks, Bucky shrugs lightly. “It’s been a crazy couple weeks. I half expected you to cancel. Hell, Steve made sure we had an invitation waiting at Sam and Riley’s.”

Bruce flinches. “You could’ve—”

“Gone to Thanksgiving with a dozen-plus Wilsons instead of with our favorite people?” Bucky finishes, and Bruce stares down at his remaining couple napkins as his friend shakes his head. “That wasn’t going to happen. Plus, it would’ve broken Dot’s heart.”

“They only have one doggie,” Dot agrees with a little nod.

“See? One dog. Tragedy.”

Bucky rewards Bruce’s snort and eye-roll with a broad, toothy grin—at least, until Dot catches her foot in her dress and tumbles off one of the chairs. Bucky abandons his drink to help her up (and, presumably, to soothe her _before_ she decides crying is a viable option), and for a moment, Bruce abandons his napkins to watch the two of them. He feels warm and full in a way he’s missed, and he can’t help smiling as Dot dusts off her dress and snidely informs Bucky that he’s in charge of setting up the cards from now on.

“Because the chairs aren’t safe anymore,” she reports, and Bucky barks a laugh as she shoves the cards at him.

Once all the napkins are settled beside Dot’s cards, Bruce wanders into the living room to check on the rest of their guests. Natasha and Pepper are sitting on the couch with Amy, listening intently as the girl shows off all her Thanksgiving-related school crafts from the last week and a half. Steve looms behind them, his arms leaning on the back of the couch as he prompts Amy with the same sorts of questions Bruce’s heard him ask his own daughter.

“And what did you learn about the Pilgrims?” he asks at one point.

Amy peers up at him. “People were mean to them so they moved away from the place they used to live and went to a rock.”

Pepper smiles. “I don’t think it was a literal rock,” she offers.

“My teacher said it was,” Amy reports matter-of-factly, and at Pepper’s side, Natasha almost snorts her wine.

A few feet away, James Rhodes shrugs and sips his beer. “I’m just saying, it’s hard to convince somebody’s parents that they’re wrong about stuff like race,” he explains to Miles, who frowns suspiciously. He’s wearing khakis and one of his nicer shirts—party clothes, Amy’d called them, proof positive that she’d helped him select his wardrobe—and he shoves his hands in his pockets as Rhodey leans back against the wall. “I don’t doubt that your girlfriend—” 

“Girl-space-friend,” Carol Danvers reminds him. He rolls his eyes, and she promptly smacks him in the stomach. “You spent six weeks refusing to call me your girlfriend—”

“Wait, since when am I the one with the label phobia?” Rhodey shoots back.

“—so don’t you dare pretend that you don’t know the difference.” When he snorts at her, she digs her elbow into his side. “But to his point,” she adds after he squirms, her attention veering back toward Miles, “it’s pretty hard to change a bigot’s mind. Especially when they think they’re protecting their kid.”

Miles scowls. “But from what? I’m not a bad person.”

“Yeah, but you’re trying to apply logic to hate,” Rhodey remarks, pointing two fingers in Miles’s direction. “Far as I’m concerned, the concepts are mutually exclusive.”

“He’s kind of right,” Carol agrees, and helps herself to a sip of her boyfriend’s beer. 

Miles’s brow crinkles, a sure sign that he’s seconds away from another question (or ten), and Bruce smiles to himself as he leaves the three alone with their conversation and wanders into the kitchen. Teddy’s bent over the stove, a dishrag over his shoulder as he stirs what appears to be gravy while Tony arranges and rearranges the various desserts in their fridge. Jasper watches, smirking, as a container of cottage cheese teeters on the top shelf, threatening to bean Tony in the head.

“Free fucking entertainment,” he mutters, lifting his beer to his mouth. “I swear, this is better than fo—”

“Yeah, we’re trading,” Maria Hill says abruptly, and Jasper blinks at her as she steals his beer bottle and replaces it with her own. When he scowls, she jabs him with the neck of her newly acquired bottle. “You said I’d like it,” she informs him, “and I don’t. It tastes awful.”

“You’ve had this probably fifty times,” Jasper challenges.

“And tonight, it tastes like children’s tears and despair,” she fires back. He rolls his eyes at her, but she ignores him to lean against the counter. “Good work on the well-oiled machine,” she says after a beat, and Bruce frowns until he realizes that she’s talking to him. “I don’t think he’s charred anything yet.”

“You’re hilarious,” Tony grumbles, head still inside the fridge.

“It’s mostly thanks to Teddy’s thorough supervision,” Bruce reports, and Teddy lifts his head to beam in Bruce’s direction. He’s smiled a handful of times over the course of the day, his eyes sparkling and his face finally relaxing, and each time, Bruce’s heart’s twisted hard enough to hurt. He wants to pretend, desperately, that everything’s suddenly better—that Teddy’s back to his old self, that Amy and Miles aren’t terrified, that this new normal isn’t about to fall to pieces all around them—but he knows better. Because Teddy’s grin cracks when he moves to check on the boiling potatoes, and within seconds, he retreats back into himself.

Like a shadow of the boy who first greeted Bruce on the sidewalk, Bruce thinks, and he shakes his head.

“We’ll probably be good to go in about fifteen minutes, provided nothing explodes,” Tony reports, crowding into Bruce’s space. He slings an arm around Bruce’s waist, his touch lazy and familiar, and leans in to kiss the side of Bruce’s neck. “If you’re ready, of course.”

Maria and Jasper roll their eyes in unison. “You’re disgusting,” Maria decides, sipping her beer.

“Or you’re jealous,” Tony suggests.

“As much as I’d probably enjoy a husband as devoted as Bruce, let’s go with ‘no’ on the jealousy front.”

“Shit, like somebody that mild-mannered could put up with you,” Jasper intones, but he squeaks when Maria promptly smashes her heel down on his toes.

It’s actually twenty minutes until dinner, thanks mostly to Tony’s inability to assemble their hand-mixer—“I’m an engineer!” he snaps at one point, and Pepper removes the beaters from his hands before he hurts himself—and to Dot’s complicated seating assignments. “Red leafs mean you have a husband,” she explains, her hands on her hips as the various guests file into the dining room. “Orange ones mean you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. And—”

“I really don’t like where this is headed,” Jasper mutters, and Steve shoots him a warning look.

“—green ones mean that you’re all alone forever.” Bucky chokes on a mouthful of beer, but his daughter just grins at her captive audible. “But almost nobody’s alone forever!”

“Except us,” Maria informs Jasper, nodding toward the end of the table. 

“You mean except for you and some poor asshole named _Jesper_ ,” he returns, and she snickers into the back of her hand.

Dot merrily explains her justification for all the orange and green leaves—presumably, because the red leaves need no explanation—and more than once, Bruce is forced to stare at his feet to keep from laughing aloud. “And Miles has Bree, though he says that she’s not his girlfriend,” she announces as Miles sits down, and Rhodey shoots Carol a triumphant little smirk. “And Amy has Herman from after school.”

“ _Herman_?” Tony demands as he brings in a dish of stuffing. He sets it on the table before tilting his head at one of the place cards. “And who’s ‘Uncle Steef?’”

“That says my dad’s name,” Dot informs him, her hands back on her hips. “Amy spelled it for me.”

“Just like she spelled ‘Peeper,’” Natasha murmurs, but she’s smiling.

“And Herman is the boy in after school that Amy wants to marry,” Dot continues, and Amy blushes as pink as the party dress she’d picked out at Target. When she scuffs her bare foot along the carpet, Dot grins and slings her arms around her. “He’s really nice and he thinks she’s pretty.”

“He speaks Spanish,” Amy mutters at the floor.

“And you know what they say about guys who speak Spanish,” Jasper volunteers, and this time, _Bucky_ sends him the slightly murderous look—if only because Jasper’s waggling his eyebrows and leering a little. 

“And Mister Jasper doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Dot continues after another beat. Jasper shrugs and swigs his beer. “And Miss Maria used to have a husband, and Daddy says it’s good to only be married one time, so now she’s going to be alone.”

Maria releases a strangled noise of protest. Across the dining room, Steve’s entire face glows bright red, leaving him to stare down at his wine glass while everyone else snickers. Well, everyone but Bucky, who bursts out laughing before covering his mouth with a hand. “Sorry,” he mutters, but he still sounds like he’s chuckling.

“Somebody else might be down a husband by the end of the night,” Maria informs the room, and Steve stares up at the ceiling as the blush also creeps down his neck and along the rims of his ears.

“But wait a second,” Teddy (bearer of an orange leaf) says as they all start to sit down. He peers at where Dot’s wedged between Steve and Carol. “You didn’t tell us why you have an orange leaf.”

Dot shrugs. “It’s a secret,” she informs him haughtily, and immediately unfolds her napkin.

Seated between Miles and Natasha, Pepper smiles. “Is he nice to you?” she asks.

“Just because I have an orange leaf doesn’t mean I have a boyfriend,” Dot replies, and Bucky almost snorts his beer.

They pass around the serving dishes and load up their plates before Miles awkwardly reminds them of last year’s new tradition of sharing their gratitude before they eat. He stares at his hands as he says it, his lips pursing together, but everyone immediately abandons their utensils (Amy with some gentle nudging from Tony) to go around the table. They start at Bucky and work counter-clockwise, and Bruce smiles a little at all the familiar answers: a healthy family, good friends, fairy godbrothers and godsisters (Dot, naturally), rewarding jobs. Maria grumbles when Carol steals her work-related answer, Jasper waxes poetic about his new baby niece (but refuses to share pictures), Pepper and Natasha send one another fond glances even though they’re thankful for hot yoga and a quiet apartment, respectively. 

Next to Pepper, Miles twists his napkin in his hands for a second. “Steve kind of already said this,” he admits, his attention focused more on his lap than the table in general, “but I’m really grateful for my family. Things have been weird, but, I mean—” He draws in a long breath before he raises his head and glances in Tony and Bruce’s direction. “This year’s still so much better than last year,” he says after a beat, “and I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t met you guys.”

Bruce smiles almost involuntarily, the last hints of tension finally seeping away as Miles offers him one tiny, unshakeable grin. Tony leans around both Amy and Teddy to reach over and rub the back of their son’s shoulder, his own smile warmer than any sun. “Back at you, kid,” he says, and Miles rolls his eyes even as he leans into Tony’s touch.

“Kind of the best answer,” Teddy teases once Tony rights himself (and his slightly teetering chair), and Miles elbows him a little in response. Teddy winks, though, his easy manner so refreshing that Bruce almost forgets about the last week or so of their lives. At least, until Teddy rolls his lips together. “I guess if I had to come up with something that nobody else’s said already,” he supplies after a few seconds, “I’d say that I’m grateful to be with a foster family that really trusts me. Since trust’s in short supply lately, and all.” He rubs the side of his neck, his little grin faltering, and Bruce’s stomach twists into knots. “I’ve been in a lot of homes, gone through a lot with other foster families, but you guys— I’ve always felt welcome here.” He steals one tiny glance in Bruce’s direction. “Even when things aren’t exactly perfect.”

Bruce nods weakly and forces a little smile, dropping his eyes to his lap. His mind’s so filled with the last week’s silence—Teddy’s self-imposed exile, Teddy’s avoidance tactics, Teddy’s unshaven face and non-answers and refusal to face anyone head-on—to really respond, though, or to add to Tony’s little banter-and-shoulder-rub routine. He stares at his hands, instead, folding and unfolding them as Amy starts into a long explanation about her “nice brothers who are never mean.”

But he hardly hears her. Instead, he hears all his own rushing thoughts and emotions, hears the guilt that hammers in his temples like a second pulse, hears the same doubts about Teddy whispering in his ears. Because he trusts Teddy, but only to an extent.

He believes Teddy, but only up to a certain line.

He thinks Teddy’s innocent, but only to the extent that he—

“Big guy?” someone murmurs, and Bruce jerks out of his own head to discover that Tony’s staring at him, a steadying hand on his arm. A few of their friends look on, worry caught in their expressions, but Tony just smiles. “It’s your turn.”

Bruce blinks, just once, before he narrows his eyes. “There’s no way you _and_ Amy both finished in that time,” he accuses.

“He said ‘ditto what everybody else said’ and moved right on to you,” Steve reports helpfully—and then swears under his breath when Tony kicks him under the table. Bucky snorts, Natasha rolls her eyes, and within a half-second, all the tension washes away.

Bruce shakes his head at all of them before deciding, “I’m grateful that my life’s always exciting.”

Jasper grins. “I’ll drink to that,” he declares, and raises his beer bottle in a toast.

Everyone else is so busy clinking glasses (or juice boxes, in Dot and Amy’s cases) that they miss Tony leaning over to press his lips to the soft spot just below Bruce’s ear. “You okay?” he asks in a murmur.

Bruce reaches down and squeezes his hand. “I will be,” he promises, and when Tony smiles, he can’t help but smile back. 

 

==

 

Hours later, after dessert and a few dozen rounds of Apples to Apples, after parceling out leftovers and hugging friends goodbye, Bruce stands for a moment in their upstairs hallway and just _listens_. There’s finally silence in their house, a peace broken only by the sound of the wind outside the house and Tony humming as he putters around in their bedroom, and Bruce—

In those few seconds, his belly and heart both full to bursting, Bruce can pretend that their life is simple, free of criminal cases, mysterious fires, school woes, and personal drama. He can pretend, in that familiar, warm silence, that everything is easy and comfortable for him, his husband, and their family. 

He closes his eyes and basks in it, and for a moment, he believes it.

But only for a moment.

He’s about to head back to the master bedroom—to drag Tony down onto their bed and wrap himself up in that familiar warmth until he can finally sleep—when he hears a whimpering in Amy’s room. There’s no urgency in it, no desperate shrieks of panic like during one of her night terrors, but he still inches her bedroom door open to peer inside. The butterflies stretch across the wall and ceiling, illuminating her face and messy hair as she tosses and turns in bed, grimacing. Her blankets are mostly on the floor, as is one of her pillows and her stuffed kangaroo. 

As Bruce watches, she whimpers a few more times—tiny, wounded sounds that feel like individual knives piercing his chest—before she settles. He waits until her breathing slows before he creeps to pick up Joey and to tuck her back in. She clings to the toy the second it’s in her grip, but readjusting the blankets just causes her brow to wrinkle. She wriggles slightly, not quite waking up, and shoves her face into the pillow.

“No, Teddy,” she says in her sleep, and Bruce’s heart immediately sinks like a stone. He freezes, one hand still clutching her comforter, and watches as she starts to curl herself into a ball. For the first time since he heard her from the hallway, his breath sounds more labored than hers, trembling in a way he can’t really help.

She says _no_ again, almost whining, and Bruce releases the blanket to put a hand on her shoulder. “Amy,” he says quietly, and she flinches away from him. “Amy, it’s Bruce, you’re not—”

“Teddy, _please_ ,” she says, still asleep. Her fingers curl against Joey, and she hides her face in his fur. “He’ll get me.”

She’s so curled into herself, so hidden from the world, that Bruce almost misses the words entirely. He freezes then, his hand hovering over shoulder, as his blood runs cold. He bends down closer, close enough he can hear the quiver in her breath as she tightens her already white-knuckled grip on her kangaroo.

“Tristan’ll get me, Teddy,” she says, and Bruce’s knees almost give out.

When Tony finds him ten or fifteen minutes later, Bruce is kneeling on the floor, his fingers stroking Amy’s hair. She’s sleeping peacefully, her dream a distant memory, but Bruce’s hand still feels shaky as Tony tugs him to his feet and leads him out of the room. 

“What—” Tony starts to ask the very second they’re in the hallway, but he presses his lips into a tight line the second Bruce raises his head. Bruce wonders for a moment what Tony sees in his expression, what fear or dread’s settled behind his eyes, but his mind’s reeling too hard to process that. He drags his hand over his face and through his hair, trying desperately to string the right words together while his husband stares at him.

Finally, though, he wets his lips. Wets them, swallows, and draws in the longest, shakiest breath of his life. “I think Teddy’s not telling us about the fire because he’s trying to protect Amy,” he says, and he’s not sure what he feels first: the prickle of the tears in his eyes, or the warmth of Tony’s arms wrapping around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In an MPU first, this story is going to be eighteen chapters rather than the usual sixteen. A posting schedule reflecting this (and updating other story posting dates) can be found [here. ](http://the-wordbutler.tumblr.com/post/100790773907/i-had-to-write-this-one-on-the-computer-because-my)


	15. Part of That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Teddy returns to court, and Bruce is reminded that sometimes, the only way to feel like you’re still staying afloat is to feel connected to the people around you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interlocutory appeals are basically appeals that occur during pending cases rather than at the end of the case. They are rare. A motion in limine, which is also mentioned in this chapter, is a motion that prevents one side or the other from mentioning certain information at trial. 
> 
> Thanks as always to Jen and saranoh, who responded appropriately to certain revelations present in this chapter. Yeah, you know the one.

“The issue today isn’t about Teddy Altman’s crimes, or the witnesses and evidence that suggest he started the fire in the Pierpont home. And it’s not about Edward, Sylvia, and Tristan Pierpont. Instead, it’s about whether the State can fairly prosecute Mister Altman here in Suffolk County. Whether the district court and the jury here, in this place, can be fair and unbiased against the juvenile.”

There’s a heavy silence in the courtroom as Assistant Attorney General Mike Peterson unbuttons his suit coat and rests his hands on the sides of the podium. He glances at his notes, presses his lips into a tight line, and nods to himself. Bruce swears in that second that he can hear not just his own heartbeat, but every other heartbeat in the room.

But then, Peterson raises his head and finds Judge Smithe’s eyes.

“The answer to that question,” he says, “is no.”

It’s just after nine a.m. on a late November Monday that’d dawned bitterly cold and barren. Bruce’d tossed and turned all night, his mind twisting in circles until he’d finally climbed out of bed and headed downstairs somewhere around four. He’d brewed tea and walked outside with the dogs, the wind cutting through his bathrobe as he’d stood on the deck and studied their yard in the dark.

He’d tried to calm his racing thoughts, but when he’d stepped into the shower an hour later, his brain’d felt as steamy as the bathroom.

“We’ll get through this the same as every other obstacle,” Tony’d promised after Bruce’d climbed back between the sheets, hair and skin damp. He’d wrapped arms and a leg around Bruce, and for some reason, Bruce’d curled closer instead of pushing him away. “We’re really good at hearings where the odds are totally stacked against us.”

Bruce’d snorted against his shoulder. “You would be the expert on that,” he’d replied, and Tony’d kissed him on the corner of the mouth before they’d fallen asleep for one last, fitful hour.

Sleep feels like a distant memory now, though, and Bruce draws in a breath as he watches Mike Peterson shift his weight and adjust his notes on the podium. He’s dressed in a perfectly tailored, dark blue suit, his shoes shining within an inch of their lives, and Bruce remembers all at once that he’s not just a run-of-the-mill attorney but one of the very best in the state. He’s a prosecutor whose whole life revolves around tackling cases like this one, Bruce reminds himself, and his stomach and head both swim. 

Next to him, Tony fidgets, his fingers drumming against his thigh. He’s wearing one of his most expensive suits, complete with a silk tie and his flashiest cufflinks. For today, he’s not Tony Stark the father but Tony Stark the genius attorney and part-time businessman, a force to be faced and reckoned with.

Except he still shifts his weight like a worried parent, still draws in long breaths only to release them shakily.

So much for their façades, Bruce thinks, and he reaches to curl his hand around Tony’s restless fingers.

“And that brings us to the issue of Mister Altman’s placement,” Peterson continues, and Bruce blinks as he realizes he’s missed—or unintentionally ignored—half the prosecutor’s argument. He shakes away the last few lingering thoughts to focus on the way Peterson flips a page in his legal pad and how easily he leans his weight back on the podium. “In her response to my motion, Miss Rowan suggested I believed Mister Stark and Mister—I’m sorry, Doctor Banner are an inappropriate placement. But that willfully misrepresents the argument.”

Judge Smithe leans back in her chair a few inches, and for the first time, Bruce notices that she’s toying idly with a pen. “Watch your tone,” she warns, but there’s curiosity in her expression, too.

Bruce swallows around the sudden, thickly nervous feeling that sticks in the back of his throat.

“The problem with Teddy’s foster care placement isn’t their fitness as parents, it’s their status,” Peterson says, shrugging slightly. “They’re both prosecuting attorneys in this county. Both active in the legal community, both well-respected, both well-liked. Doctor Banner teaches at the law school and attends Inns of Court every month. Mister Stark lectures at appellate practice workshops all over the state, not to mention nationally.” He pauses just long enough to wet his lips. “What’s more, Mister Stark’s the son of Howard Stark, the heir to Stark Industries and one of their major shareholders. He serves on the board, and he oversees most of the charity work that happens under the umbrella of the Maria Stark Foundation. Including Urban Ascent, which is possibly the best-known youth charity in the state and which keeps expanding. And, of course, Doctor Banner’s on that board, too.”

He shakes his head for a moment, his eyes darting back down to his notes before he once again glances up at Judge Smithe. Her expression’s passingly interested, her lips pressed into a tight line, but Bruce recognizes from experience the thousand little tics that prove just how engaged she really is: she bounces her chair, drums her pen against her palm, twists the cap a few more times. She’s sinking into Peterson’s words, into his argument, and Bruce’s barely contained nervousness starts to unravel.

Tony shifts again, his leg bouncing hard enough to shake Bruce’s chair. On Tony’s other side, Jessica Jones glares at him until he stills.

“I’m willing to respectfully ignore the material in my motion for you to recuse yourself, your honor,” Peterson finally says, “but I can’t ignore just how well-known and well-liked Teddy’s foster parents are. Nine-tenths of any potential jury pool’s going to recognize Mister Stark’s name, or his face, or the fact that he married his coworker and friend and adopted an orphaned black boy—something that’s been publicized on multiple gossip sites and society pages in the last year.” Tony bristles, his hands curling to fists on his thighs, and Bruce strokes his thumb against the side of his wrist even as his own body tightens involuntarily. “And with all due respect to Miss Rowan’s position, that’s not something a motion in limine can fix, not when multiple interviews occurred at their house with them both present. Not when they and their son are potential witnesses.”

“Miles is _not_ —” Tony starts, a knee jerk reaction that’s just loud enough to catch the judge’s attention, and Bruce grips his wrist hard. He jerks at that, surprise flashing across his features as everyone else—Judge Smithe, the attorneys, Teddy, Jessica, and Teddy’s handful of dedicated, class-skipping friends—twists to glance at him. He clears his throat and drops his eyes down to the floor. “Sorry,” he mutters, but there’s no real remorse in his tone.

Bruce wants desperately to say something, to offer some comfort or reassurance in the next few beats of silence. But he knows anything he says’ll sound like a bald-faced lie, so he simply tangles his fingers with Tony’s and forces a smile.

The fact that he’ll shout Peterson down in open court before allowing his son to be a pawn in this dog-and-pony show . . . Well, that’s a discussion for a different day.

Peterson nods slightly before he turns back to face the judge. “There’s no way to separate Mister Altman’s foster family from this community,” he says finally, and for the first time, Bruce thinks he hears something like regret seeping into his tone. “And with their connections, there’s no way to ensure that the jury won’t ignore the evidence in favor of the assumption that no child taken in by two rich, well-respected men could be a murderer—no matter how true that fact might be.”

He thanks Judge Smithe before he heads back to counsel table and settles into the squeaky vinyl chair there. Sif starts to stand, her legal pad in hand, but Teddy snags her by the arm of her suit coat and motions her down to his level. They exchange a handful of whispers, Sif nodding seriously while Teddy speaks. A few times, Bruce thinks he glances back in their direction, but he can’t be sure.

Finally, Sif pats the teen on the shoulder and rises, smoothing her blazer over her dark red dress. She’d strode into the courtroom like a character from a courtroom drama, her head held high and her shoulders tight. She’d barely glanced at Peterson before leaning over the first row of gallery seats to meet Bruce’s eyes. “I am no further in investigating your new theory than I was on Friday night,” she’d said seriously, “but I’m trying.”

“You know, Yoda had a saying about doing versus trying,” Tony’d offered. When she’d narrowed her eyes at him, he’d raised his hands in defense. “Just reminding you of the obvious.”

“Someone should remind _you_ who’s representing your son,” she’d returned coolly, and headed straight for counsel table. 

She’s calm and collected as she arranges her notes on the podium in the well of the courtroom, a far cry from the frantic woman in jeans and a sweater who’d paced circles through their living room Friday night after all the kids’d left. For the first time since his house arrest, Teddy’d asked permission to head over to Billy’s until curfew—and he’d invited Miles to tag along, too. “Eli said there’s not enough guys,” he’d explained with a bashful little smile, “and he likes Miles pretty okay.”

“He likes me a lot!” Miles’d called from somewhere in the laundry room. “Also, someone needs to do laundry!”

“So earn your keep!” Tony’d hollered back, and Bruce’d almost chuckled at the sound of Miles’s dramatic, put-upon sigh. Across the kitchen island, Teddy’d fidgeted nervously. “And he can go as long as you’re back before we get labelled ‘the guys who let the juvenile offender break curfew.’”

Bruce’d rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t mean it like that,” he’d promised.

Teddy’d snorted. “Yeah, right,” he’d replied, but he’d grinned a little, too.

By the time Steve and Bucky’d arrived to pick Amy up for indoor s’mores and a movie—a Black Friday tradition in the Rogers-Barnes household—Sif’d texted that she’d be over in ten minutes. And by the time Tony’d brewed a pot of coffee, she’d started circling their coffee table, her fingers digging into her long, messy hair.

Tony’d offered her coffee, tea, pie, or some combination of all three, but she’d waved him off. “And you said that she was asking Teddy to keep the other boy away?” she’d asked after a time, her dark eyes searching Bruce’s face.

He’d nodded. “That’s what she said,” he’d answered, and Tony’d wandered over to stand at his side, their shoulders brushing. “She was asleep. I don’t think she knew what she was saying. But—”

“You’re sure that she is—was—afraid of Tristan,” Sif’d cut in. Her tone’d been urgent, serious, and Bruce’d pursed his lips. “That she couldn’t have meant another boy? One from school, or—”

“There’s only one Tristan who Amy’d associate with Teddy,” Tony’d interrupted, “and that’s her foster brother. The one who got caught in the fire and is no longer a problem in her life.” Sif’d nodded slightly, her arms crossing tightly under her breasts, and Tony’d dragged fingers through his hair. “When Bruce told me last night, it, I don’t know, it shook me up,” he’d admitted, his mouth twitching like he’d intended to force a smile but abandoned it halfway through. “But if you think about it, it makes sense. The way Amy distrusts tween boys. The way she wakes up screaming every couple nights. The way Teddy won’t talk to anybody about what happened, no matter how much of his hide’s on the line.” He’d dropped his hands to his sides and sighed. “It’s the only explanation.”

Sif’d drawn in a long, slow breath. “You are asking me to create a defense around the assumption that your seven-year-old foster daughter started the fire that killed her last foster family,” she’d said after several tense beats.

“No,” Bruce’d corrected, “we’re asking you to find out whether that _is_ Teddy’s defense. Whether that’s the truth.”

She’d sighed and cast her eyes up at the ceiling. “You might not like the answer.”

“We already don’t,” Tony’d replied, and Bruce’d reached over to touch the middle of his back.

At the podium now, more than forty-eight hours later, Sif sucks in another long, steadying breath before she rests her hands on the pencil tray and meets Judge Smithe’s eyes. For a moment, they stare each other down, the judge tilting forward to lean her arms on the bench while Sif wets her lips. Bruce realizes in that moment that despite her reputation, he’s never actually seen Sif work. 

From the way she holds herself in the second before she smiles, he’s glad Thor’s the one who usually faces her.

“My response to Mister Peterson’s motion sums up most of my arguments,” she begins, “but I’d be abandoning my duties as Teddy’s attorney if I didn’t highlight a few key points. Including the fact that the statute in question—the one that allows for a change of venue—requires an affirmative showing from the party requesting the change. That requires affidavits or testimony, not bold-faced conjecture focusing on just how popular and well-liked Teddy’s foster parents are. And please note, we are talking about his _foster_ parents. Not his actual family. Not the people who raised him from infancy. Two men who, however much they care about Teddy, have only known him for a handful of weeks.”

The harsh truth of the words nearly knocks the breath out of Bruce’s lungs, and next to him, Tony bristles almost imperceptibly. Sif’s right, in a way—they’ve only known Teddy eight or nine weeks at most, nothing compared to the years that belong to Jessica Jones or even to Amy—but at the same time, he _feels_ like family. He feels like part of their life, someone they need to look after and protect like they do for their friends, or Dot.

Like they do for their own son, Bruce thinks, and he only discovers he’s pressed his knee hard against Tony’s leg when Tony reaches down and rests his hand there. Bruce tries to smile, and Tony’s mouth twitches in response.

At the podium, Sif gestures loosely. “Suffolk County is where all the evidence is,” she continues, and Bruce realizes belatedly that he’s missed the last few sentences. “It’s where the crimes in this case occurred, where the witnesses—many of them minors—reside. It’s where Teddy’s foster sister, a girl with whom he is closely bonded, attends school and receives services. It’s where the Pierponts lived and are buried. Any other venue would be more inconvenient for everyone involved, including the State.”

Judge Smithe’s head bobs in a tiny nod as she leans back in her chair, but Sif just rolls her lips together. She glances at her notes, almost as though she’s collecting herself, before releasing a long, steady sigh. “As for Mister Stark and Doctor Banner,” she says after one more beat of silence, and Bruce’s throat immediately thickens. “The State is right about them. They _are_ pillars of the community. They have earned the respect and perhaps even the awe of other lawyers, of social service providers, of ordinary citizens. I think everyone here has watched at least one of Mister Stark’s morning show interviews.”

Jessica Jones snorts loudly enough that both Sif and Teddy twist around to glance at her. She shrugs, and on the bench, Judge Smithe barely hides her smile. 

Sif’s mouth curls into a smirk as she twists back to the podium. “But Derek Bishop is a well-known member of this community, and his daughter was prosecuted—or, at least, placed on diversion—in this county,” she presses, shrugging. “No one asked to remove Zebediah Killgrave’s trial to a different venue. Using social status as a basis to change venue—one might argue that is a very slippery slope, your honor.”

Judge Smithe raises an eyebrow. “But you would not?”

Sif smiles easily. “You know how much I dislike the slippery slope argument,” she replies cryptically, and Judge Smithe’s mouth quirks into a tiny grin. “Regardless, Mister Altman humbly requests that venue remain in Suffolk County and the case proceed to trial.”

Smithe nods slightly as Sif gathers up her legal pad and returns to the table, watching as the attorney tips her head toward Teddy and murmurs something close to his ear. Teddy nods, and for the first time all morning, his shoulders unclench. 

At the State’s table, Peterson rises. “The State would waive rebuttal unless—”

“You plan to appeal this ruling, don’t you?” the judge interrupts. Peterson blinks, apparently caught off guard, but Smithe just leans forward to rest her arms on the bench. “If I deny your motion, you plan to file an interlocutory appeal, correct?”

Peterson nods. “Yes, your honor.”

“And you’re not bothered by the fact it might add a year of litigation to this case?”

“As an interlocutory appeal, it’d be expedited and—”

Smithe raises a hand. “That was not the question,” she cuts in.

Peterson frowns slightly, his lips pursing. “If delaying justice in the short term ensures a fair trial in the long term, it’s worth it,” he answers, and Bruce glances over at Tony just in time to watch him roll his eyes. He nudges Tony’s knee, and Tony wrinkles his nose. “The State only receives one bite at the apple,” Peterson continues. “If Mister Altman is acquitted, we can’t retry him, no matter how fundamentally unfair—”

“The process was,” Smithe finishes for him. He nods curtly as she folds her hands atop the bench. “And if I rule in your favor, where would you propose the case be moved? Grant County?”

“Miss Jones has found a foster care placement in Washington County that is more than willing to take Mister Altman and his foster sister,” Peterson replies. The judge flicks her gaze down into the gallery, and Bruce watches as Jessica nods subtly. “There’s also a good detention center in that county, if it comes to that.”

“You mean if you asked the next judge to detain Teddy and that judge agreed,” Smithe says as she glances back in Peterson’s direction.

He nods. “If it comes to that,” he repeats, and Judge Smithe snorts softly as she nods.

Peterson sits then, his back ramrod straight as the judge finally wrenches her gaze away from both of the attorneys and focuses instead on the file folder that’s spread across the bench. She flips through pages of a document—Peterson’s motion or Sif’s response, Bruce guesses, but it could just as easily be a print-out of a relevant case or statute. Her brow tightens, then relaxes, her lips roll together only to part a second later, and all the while, silence sweeps across the courtroom. Heavy, oppressive silence, the kind of silence that he swears seeps into his pores and crawls under his skin. The longer it’s allowed to settle, the more Tony starts to fidget, his body shifting and his leg bouncing until Bruce reaches over and squeezes his thigh.

Tony immediately grips his hand. It’s a solid, steadying touch, and for one beat, they share a tense smile.

Then, Judge Smithe sighs.

She’s removing her glasses as Bruce glances up at her, her fingers rubbing her still-furrowed brow before she raises her eyes from the bench. She spends a few seconds surveying their faces—Peterson and Sif first, but then Teddy, Jessica, Teddy’s friends, and both Bruce and Tony. Finally, she flips the folder shut and leans back in her seat.

“I came in with plans to decide this motion today,” she admits with a small shake of her head, her braid sliding off her shoulder. “I read the parties’ arguments, I researched the law, I made lists of pros and cons. But, of course, I’m used to straight-forward cases in this courtroom. Point A leads to Point C with B in the middle. This one— It’s not like that.”

She leans forward again, her elbows resting on the bench as she gestures loosely. “Instead, I have foster parents who have status in the community that I either should or shouldn’t care about. The jury might be tainted, but the evidence and minor witnesses are all based here. Mister Altman has another foster home waiting—but everything Mister Altman knows is in this county, and he certainly deserves a fair shake, too.”

She glances back down at the folder one more time before she shakes her head. “I can’t decide the motion today,” she finally informs the courtroom, and Bruce swallows as his stomach twists itself into knots. “Instead, I will take it under advisement for a week or two, really scour the case law, and try to come up with a solution that won’t leave everyone in limbo.” She looks out into the well of the courtroom, her eyes settling not on Peterson or Sif but on Teddy. “I know that’s not the answer you needed today, but I think it’s the answer you deserve. We’ll revisit the other issues when I know what we’re doing with venue. Otherwise, court’s adjourned.”

Peterson and Sif both thank the judge, their voices hollow and distant as the court reporter asks everyone to rise. Tony laces their fingers together as they stand and tugs Bruce into his personal space, their sides pressing flush together as they watch Smithe exit the courtroom. Sif immediately turns to Teddy once the secured door closes behind the judge, her hand on his shoulder as they duck their heads together to discuss something while the teen balls his fists at his sides.

“This is bad, right?” Tony asks quietly, and Bruce wrenches his eyes away from the defense table to meet his husband’s intent gaze. “Because you work with Smithe all the time, you know how she hates delaying cases unless there’s a good reason, so I can’t help but think—”

“It’s not good, no,” Bruce says quietly, and Tony presses his lips into a tight, tense line. Bruce shakes his head, a futile attempt to clear away the worry that keeps threatening to bubble over. Because Tony’s right about Smithe—about how much she hates delaying cases, about how infrequently she holds motions when she can easily rule on them and keep the process moving forward—and Bruce—

Bruce can’t guess the outcome, but he can sink into the uncertainty that threatens to drown them all.

He releases Tony’s hand to press his palm to the small of Tony’s back, and he’s steadying both of them with that single touch when Jessica steps into their space. “We need to tell Amy about this,” she says, a heavy note of finality in her voice. Tony’s mouth pops open in obvious protest, but she raises a hand. “You still have time to decide whether you want to move her,” she continues, “but fuck if I’m waiting another second to warn her that Teddy’s leaving. She needs to know and start working through it.”

“You assume he’s going,” Tony points out.

“No, I’m being proactive,” she retorts. Bruce raises an eyebrow at that, and Jessica heaves a sigh. “Fine, I’m not being proactive as much as I’m reading the writing on the wall,” she admits, and Tony scoffs as he rolls his eyes. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but she needs to know. She loves Teddy like a brother. If we wait until he’s definitely going to tell her, it’ll—”

“Break her,” a quiet voice offers, and Bruce tears his attention away from Jessica to turn and glance at Teddy. He’s standing between Kate Bishop and Billy, the former with her hands in her pockets while the latter grips Teddy’s arm like he’s afraid Teddy might escape—or worse, might be dragged away from him. Teddy, however, just runs his fingers through his messy hair. “With coming into state custody and then everything that happened with the Pierponts, Amy’s been through enough,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t want to hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt. And even though this’ll hurt either way, she’ll at least have time to process it before . . . ”

The words catch somewhere in the back of his throat, and he trails off. Billy reaches up to massage the back of his neck gently, and they lean into one another. Bruce is about to look away when Kate elbows Teddy in the ribs. “Tell them the rest,” she demands.

“Kate—”

“You said you’d tell them,” she presses, and crosses her arms over her chest.

Teddy frowns, his whole face tightening, but when he glances over at Billy, the other boy just nods. He sighs and scrubs a hand over his mouth before he mutters something halfway under his breath. 

Bruce swallows and waits a beat before he says, “We didn’t hear—”

“I want to tell her,” Teddy repeats, the words shaky but clear. Bruce’s breath sticks in his throat, almost choking him, and next to him, Tony blinks helplessly. Teddy drops his hands to his side and shakes his head. “She’s— I don’t have any siblings, not really, but I have Amy. She’s the closest thing to a sister I’ll ever have. And I don’t want her to have to find out that I might leave her from you guys or Jessica. I want her to—” His voice shudders, and he draws in a long, trembling breath. “She needs to hear it from me.”

Bruce’s heart lodges in his throat, then, a lump he can’t swallow or breathe around, and he drops his eyes to the floor. Tony tips in toward him, drawing himself into Bruce’s personal space without a single word. The touch should comfort him, Bruce thinks, but instead, it just twists the knife of hurt that’s buried in his chest.

Next to them, Jessica releases a resigned little sigh. “We can do that,” she agrees, her voice unusually subdued. “If that’s what you want to do, then—”

“It’s the last thing I _want_ ,” Teddy corrects her, “but since I’m pretty much her big brother. It’s kind of my job.”

“Not pretty much,” Tony says immediately. Bruce jerks his head up and discovers that he’s staring right at Teddy, his jaw tight with resolve. He shakes his head. “Maybe there’s not paperwork, but you’re her big brother. You’re her big brother, you’re Miles’s whatever-you-want-to-call-it, and you’re our something. For however long this lasts, you’re part of that. Okay?”

Teddy nods slightly, his eyes dampening. The hand he raises to wipe at them shakes a little, and when he sucks in a shuddering breath, Kate reaches up and shoves at his shoulder. He stumbles, almost falling into the empty gallery seat next to them, but the girl just shrugs at his accusatory gaze. “You need a different brand of hug than Billy and I can offer, and you know it,” she says. “I’m just pointing you in the right direction.”

“You’re going to be pointed in the direction of a truancy proceeding if you’re not careful,” Jessica reminds her sharply.

Kate waves her off, but not before Teddy slowly extricates himself from both his friends. He stands there for a moment, his arms limp at his side and his big eyes filled with tears, until Bruce can’t keep himself from opening an arm to him. Like the first time they properly hugged, he thinks to himself, and the memory feels suddenly like it’s a thousand miles away.

But Teddy folds easily into his grip, sinking into the hug like they’ve known one another for a thousand years. Tony reaches over and strokes his back like he’s soothing their actual son, his touch steady and sure.

“We’ve got you,” Tony says, the words so overflowing with certainty that Bruce’s heart aches. “No matter what the hell happens next, we’ve got you until we _can’t_. Okay?”

“Okay,” Teddy murmurs, and despite all the uncertainty of the last few days—about Teddy, the motion, Amy, and the fire—Bruce can’t help but tip his face into the boy’s messy hair.

 

==

 

“But he’ll come back, right?” Miles asks the next night, and Bruce releases a long breath into the cold November night. 

They’re a few blocks from home, bundled in their winter best as Dummy and Butterfingers drag them down the sidewalk, their tails wagging as they investigate all the exciting smells the winter offers. Bruce nudges Butterfingers away from a half-open garbage can as he guides him toward the corner, and next to him, Miles stumbles as Dummy pulls hard at his leash. They’d planned on walking down to the park and star-gazing, but the sky’d clouded over to a dark black-gray during dinner. 

Bruce suspects that by tomorrow, there’ll be snow.

“Dad?” Miles asks quietly, and Bruce pulls himself out of his thoughts in time to glance over at his son. Miles’s face is mostly hidden by his hood and scarf, but his eyes, bright under the street lights, peer out at him. “Teddy’ll come back once the jury decides he’s innocent, right? Moving to a new home, that’d just be a temporary thing.”

“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Bruce admits, and leads the dogs across the street.

Miles follows quietly, his eyes studying the sidewalk instead of Bruce’s face, and for what feels like the thousandth time in the last two days, Bruce sighs. He’s tried to put Judge Smithe’s impending decision out of his mind and focus on the other aspects of his life—his work, his friends, his family—but every time he pauses for even as much as a few seconds, the tidal wave of worry threatens to drown him all over again. Even now, out walking the dogs with Miles, he feels his nerves twitch and crawl under his skin, begging him to check his phone for the text or e-mail that’ll seal Teddy’s fate.

It’s irrational, but he feels like a man balanced on a high-wire.

Worse, he knows everyone else in his life feels the same way.

Steve’d offered, very quietly, to pick Amy and Miles up after school on Monday afternoon and feed them dinner, a two-hour reprieve that’d allowed Bruce and Tony time alone with Teddy. They’d planned on talking to him about the possible move and how to tell Amy, but somehow, they’d ended up at one of Tony’s favorite restaurants in town, a ridiculously overpriced little bistro that specialized in complicated sandwiches and pasta dishes. “Order anything you want,” he’d instructed as the waitress brought over their tiny glass water carafe, and Teddy’d blinked at him. “Actually, after that face? Order two of anything you want. And a side. And an appetizer.”

Bruce’d hid his smile behind the lip of his glass. “Tony—”

“Not tonight, Banner,” he’d cut off, wagging his finger dangerously close to Bruce’s nose. Across the table, Teddy’d laughed into his menu. “We’ve had a traumatic day and for _once_ are out for a meal with a human who eats his vegetables _and_ tries new things. Which is a far cry from our kid or the five-year-old who hangs out with him on the regular, so.”

“Nobody ever said I tried new things,” Teddy’d pointed out.

“Well, you’re trying them tonight,” Tony’d declared, and proceeded to flag down the waitress to order a bottle of wine and _four_ different appetizers.

“You can’t fix this by stuffing him with food and making him laugh,” Bruce’d reminded Tony in bed that night, his fingers carding through his hair as they’d curled together in the dark. “We don’t know whether he’s protecting Amy, whether he’ll need to move, whether—”

“We can spend a day treating him like a person instead of an enigma,” Tony’d interrupted. He’d lifted his head from Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce’d let his hand droop enough to cup the back of his neck. “Just today, just after this _one_ nightmare, we can play good cops instead of, I don’t know, overprotective worrywart cops.”

Bruce’d snorted. “That’s not a thing.”

“Says you,” Tony’d replied, and settled back down into his grip.

Tony’s line about _overprotective worrywart cops_ had stayed with Bruce since, though, hanging over him like a storm cloud as he’d worked his way through his usual Tuesday schedule of hearings, dinner, and his law school class. He’d stumbled over his own thoughts during the last one, so distracted and clumsy that, at one point, a student’d blurted, “Are you okay?”

He’d blinked, then, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Would you believe that I’ve had a really rough couple days?” he’d asked. A couple of his students’d stared at him as though he’d grown a few extra heads, their faces frozen in surprise, and he’d snorted at himself before he’d shaken his head. “A word of warning to those of you who are single and childless but looking: it’s a lot of work.”

“Even when your husband’s a super dreamboat?” one of the girls—a regular Urban Ascent volunteer—had asked from the back.

Bruce’d actually chuckled. “Especially then,” he’d said, and forwarded to the next powerpoint slide.

But even after that tiny release of tension—and after Tony’d puffed out his chest in pride upon hearing the story—Bruce’d still felt a little lost and overwhelmed as he’d summoned Miles down to help him walk the dogs. Why he’d also felt compelled to warn Miles about the motion and Teddy’s possible move— Well.

A question for the ages, he supposes.

“The justice system’s not as fast as on _Law & Order_,” Bruce explains once they’ve walked another half block or so, his quiet words punctuated by their footfalls on the sidewalk. “Cases this complicated can take months, even years. Teddy’s already sixteen. To move him back would be—”

“The right thing to do?” Miles breaks in. Bruce rolls his lips together, and his son heaves a frustrated sigh as he shakes his head. “You know that this is super screwed up, yeah?” he asks sharply. “Teddy’s on trial for something he didn’t do, and now he might get sent away because of it. He might lose _everything_ —his friends, his school, Jessica, his family—and all because of this stupid lawyer who doesn’t understand that he’s not the type of guy who just—”

“His family?”

The words click together a second too late, and Miles freezes when he recognizes what he’s just said. Bruce stops, too, and twists around just in time to watch the teen drop his eyes down to the sidewalk. He scrunches up inside his ridiculous coat, shrinking into himself, and Bruce sighs quietly. He wants to reach forward and hug him, to soothe away all the stress and fear of the last few weeks, but he knows from the way Miles stands that he’d just wriggle away.

Wriggle away, shrug him off, and replace his brave façade, the same way he’s done since Teddy’s arrest. The same away as his parents, Bruce thinks, and rubs a hand over his face.

“Miles,” he says gently, “Teddy’s not—”

“Not really our family, I know,” Miles finishes, his tone almost as bitter as his irritated teenage eye roll. “You and Tony only say it all the time about both of them. Not like I missed it.”

He yanks Dummy away from the bush he’s busily inspecting and starts walking again, his long legs carrying him swiftly down the street.

Bruce drags fingers through his hair for a brief second before he tugs at Butterfingers’s lead and follows.

Miles walks ahead of him the whole rest of the way home, his pace so aggressive that a couple times, Bruce needs to jog a few paces to just to keep up. Butterfingers drags him along, anxious to stick his nose in every bush and rabbit hole that Dummy’s discovered. He whines every time Bruce pulls him away from his latest treasure, and the whole thing turns into this ridiculous comedy of errors: a slightly winded, middle-aged man half-running to keep up with his teenager while his greyhound tries to trip him—or worse, to pull him into a neighbor’s front yard.

They’re three houses from home when Bruce finally says, “Miles, wait.” There’s a sharpness to the words, an accidental urgency, and Miles’s shoulders tighten as he freezes just in front of the neighbor’s mailbox. By the time Bruce’s caught up to him, Dummy’s claimed the mailbox _and_ the recycling bin as his own, but Butterfingers investigates anyway. 

Miles keeps his head down, scuffing his sneaker against a crack in the sidewalk. “Dad—”

“They’re part of us,” Bruce blurts at the same moment, and Miles’s gaze snaps up to meet his. He shakes his head. “They’re a big part of our lives.”

His son snorts and rolls his eyes. “No kidding.”

“No, Miles, I mean—” The words stick in the back of Bruce’s throat, and he rolls his lips together. When he huffs out a breath, it clouds around them. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he admits after a beat, and Miles’s posture finally softens. “I don’t know what Judge Smithe is going to decide, or what a jury might think about Teddy. I don’t know if he’ll age out of the foster care system before the trial’s over, or even if there’ll _be_ a trial. What I know is that he and Amy, they’re part of us. And maybe the fact that we care about them—the fact that we love them—is more important than technical labels and pieces of paper that say whose family they belong to. That’s all.”

Miles nods a little at that, his hands digging into his pockets as he drops his eyes away from Bruce’s face and down at the sidewalk. He’s quiet for a long time, his toe still chipping away at the rough edge of the sidewalk. The dogs lean together, their tongues lolling out as they wait to finish their walk, but Bruce—

Bruce waits for Miles.

Finally, though, his son releases a soft little laugh. “Tony says you used to same kind of things about me before I became your kid,” he says quietly.

And if Bruce’s heart sinks at that—if it clenches and falls into his belly, if it threatens to suffocate him entirely—he hides it with a smile. “I meant it then, too,” he promises, and when he loops an arm around Miles’s shoulders, Miles falls into his touch.

 

==

 

“I spoke to Teddy after school today, and he won’t even entertain the conversation,” Sif says, leaning back against the counter. “And I can’t tell if he’s worried for Amy or for himself.”

“You realize that’s not an answer to the question, don’t you?” Tony replies. When Bruce raises his head enough to narrow his eyes, his husband holds up his hands. “I’m just pointing out the classic defense attorney equivocating that’s going on right now,” he defends, and Sif rolls her eyes. “A straight question deserves a straight answer, and you—”

“Gave the best answer possible for a complicated situation,” Sif immediately replies. Tony snorts into his coffee, and her jaw tightens. “This is not a case where every question can be answered with a simple yes or no. You of all people should know that.”

“And _you_ of all people should be working to get Teddy off,” Tony returns, and walks out of the kitchen to go check on the dogs outside.

Sif sighs and shakes her head, and at the island, Bruce dips his head back to Jessica Jones’s latest social work report. It’s a rough draft, filled with chicken-scratch notes in the margins. He’s supposed to read the summary of Teddy’s criminal case, to “check it for obvious legal screw-ups,” but he keeps backtracking to the parts about the teen’s schoolwork and home life—the parts that paint him as a normal, well-adjusted teenager instead of a possible fire-setting murderer.

The thought alone sours his stomach, and he flips the report shut before he shoves it to the furthest corner of the island. When he glances up again, Sif’s watching him carefully. “He doesn’t trust me,” she says after a beat.

Bruce frowns. “Tony?”

“Or Teddy,” she answers, and sips her coffee.

It’s finally Wednesday night—the “night of reckoning,” Tony’d called it that morning, his grin forced and a little manic as he’d stolen the last of Bruce’s coffee—and in another half-hour or so, they’ll sit down with Teddy to break the news of a possible move to Amy. Teddy’d lingered in the kitchen long after Miles’s bedtime the night before, helping with dishes and various other little tasks until, finally, Bruce’d suggested he go to bed.

“It’s not like I’ll be able to sleep,” he’d said quietly, wringing the dishtowel between his big hands. “I just keep imagining it, the way she’s going to freak out, and—”

“At least imagine the good things with it,” Tony’d volunteered, and when Bruce’d glanced over, he’d discovered his husband standing at the end of the kitchen island in his pajamas. He’d wandered upstairs over an hour before, bound and determined to pick his way through a couple appellate briefs before bed, but there he’d been: messy haired and almost smiling in the dimly lit kitchen. 

“She’s seven and she’s scared,” he continued as he’d wandered into the room to plant himself between Bruce and Teddy. “Freaking out’s pretty much a guarantee. And not just about this, since I’m pretty sure we could bring her a wagon full of kittens and she’d _still_ panic that they were tiny little harbingers of fuzzy doom.” Teddy’s snorted at that, and Bruce’d rolled his lips together to hide his grin. “But after everything you two’ve been through—good, bad, ugly, and worse—”

“What’s worse than ugly?” Teddy’d joked weakly.

Tony’d grinned. “Bruce when he’s in a bad mood?” he’d suggested, and he’d elbowed Bruce in the side when Bruce’d rolled his eyes. “My point, though, is this: after everything you’ve been through, you’ve got some good times in there. And more than that, you’re respecting all those good times by doing the right thing and breaking it to her yourself. Keep all that in _here_.”

He’d poked Teddy lightly in the chest, then, and Teddy’d smiled a little as he’d glanced back down at his hands. His death grip on the dishtowel had loosened, then, but only by a few degrees. “Jessica wants to take us out to dinner before we explain it to her,” he’d admitted quietly. “Something to soften the blow, you know?”

Bruce’d smiled around the thick feeling in the back of his throat. “That’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, but— I want Miles to come, too.” He’d lifted his head, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he’d shrugged. “He’s important to both of us, and after everything since we moved in, I just— ” He’d swallowed audibly. “I think he should be there.”

“And I think that’s the greatest idea I’ve heard in a long time,” Tony’d encouraged, and Teddy’s enormous smile’d nearly broken Bruce’s heart.

Jessica’d arrived shortly after five to pile all three kids in her car and drive them out to the restaurant of Amy’s choice. “There are so many chicken fingers in my future,” she’d complained—and then, she’d shoved her social work report into Bruce’s grip.

Sif’d rung their doorbell a full ten minutes later.

“I don’t want to believe he’s capable of this any more than you do,” she says quietly, and Bruce shakes away the cobwebs of the last few days to discover that Sif’s stepped away from the counter and is now leaning on the island, her dark eyes studying his face. “Teddy’s a thoughtful boy. He’s kind, intelligent, and nothing like the kind of juvenile offender that most people imagine when they hear ‘teenage arsonist.’” Bruce snorts a little at that, and she offers him a tiny glimmer of a smile. “But when I asked him whether he could think of anyone else who might have wanted to start the fire, he refused to answer. When I asked if he had any information beyond what the detectives know, he refused to answer. And when I asked about Amy—”

“He refused to answer?” Bruce glances over at Tony just as he returns to the island. He shrugs loosely and steals the last of Bruce’s tea, his fingertips lingering against Bruce’s hand. “Just drawing reasonable inferences, here.”

“He asked me to leave Amy out of my questions,” Sif replies. Tony freezes, the mug halfway to his mouth, and she holds up a hand. “I can’t consider it an admission. Not without more information.”

“Information we still don’t have,” Bruce murmurs.

“Exactly.” Sif sighs and massages the bridge of her nose. “I’ve defended what feels like hundreds of cases over the last ten years. But after all those cases, and their thousands of ridiculous teenage excuses, I’m still left grasping at straws.” She snorts and shakes her head. “I can’t even understand his text messages.”

Tony frowns. “What about them?”

“They’re full of nonsense.” The corner of Tony’s mouth starts to twitch upward, and she points her mug at him. “Not teenage nonsense, either. _Actual_ nonsense. And they end at least an hour earlier than Teddy insists they should.” 

She glances back down at her coffee, her lips rolling together, and Bruce swallows automatically. “You think he’s lying,” he says quietly.

Sif sighs. “I don’t know if he’s lying,” she replies after a beat, “but I think he’s leaving something important out.” She shakes her head again. “I just don’t know whether it’s to protect himself or someone else.”

“Like Amy,” Bruce murmurs.

She nods. “Like Amy.”

Sif leaves a few minutes later, her car disappearing into the late November dusk. Bruce stands on the front step as she drives away, staring down her taillights until they disappear and leave the street quiet and dark. He only realizes how long he’s remained outside when Tony walks up behind him and snakes arms around his waist, and he shivers against the sudden warmth.

“Jessica’ll be back in about an hour,” Tony says against the back of his neck, and the heat from his breath and lips pool together in the pit of Bruce’s belly. “Says they’re good as gold, but that Amy suspects something’s up. At least, I assume that’s what her text message meant, but she’s worse than Clint on her best days, never mind the new swiping keyboard she—”

The end of the sentence dissolves into a mumble when Bruce twists around in Tony’s arms, grabs the back of his head, and kisses him hard and hungry. Tony gasps a little into his mouth, and Bruce knows when he closes his eyes that Tony’s are still open, still staring at him in surprise in the porch light. They stumble back against the closed front door, Bruce’s fingers curling in Tony’s hair as he tastes coffee and tea on his tongue, and before he knows it, Tony’s hands are under his sweater.

The shock of warmth against the bitter cold of the evening leaves Bruce moaning, and he presses his hips hard against the familiar weight of Tony’s thigh. Tony’s fingernails press into the bare plane of his back, and when they break apart for breath—Bruce’s forehead against the door, Tony’s lips close to his ear—they rock together like teenagers.

“I need—” Bruce starts, but he can’t complete the sentence, not when his mind’s clouded over with a thousand other, desperate thoughts.

“Yeah,” Tony agrees, and he kisses the place just under Bruce’s ear before opening the front door.

They stay mostly clothed until they’re in the bedroom, their hands scrabbling for purchase and their mouths colliding every few steps; at one point, Tony pins Bruce against the banister to suck his neck, and Bruce claws at his t-shirt as he keens. They forget about the door, the dogs, even the rest of their _lives_ to shed their clothes before half-climbing, half-falling onto the bed, Tony already reaching for the bedside table as Bruce kisses and nips his way down the curve of his spine. Words fall away quickly, only to be replaced with needy little groans and Tony’s pleas, breathless as he ducks his face toward the pillows.

Bruce runs his hands all over his skin—his sides and ribs, his thighs and hips and back—before he really listens.

Before he presses his mouth to Tony’s shoulder blade and starts to pick them both apart from the inside out.

He wants to say a million things in that short span of minutes, wants to fill the room with all the thoughts that threaten to drown him, but somehow, he loses himself instead to the sound of their skin slapping and the helpless, greedy noises that bubble out of his throat. He pours every one of his worries and his fears into every touch, every kiss, every bite, every thrust, until he’s gripping Tony’s bare hip hard enough to bruise and _shaking_ with the effort not to just fall apart at the seams. 

“Got you,” Tony says somewhere amid all the gasps and groans, and when Bruce falls forward enough that he spreads his hand against the mattress, Tony reaches down and presses his palm against the back of his hand. He props himself up with Bruce’s help, links their fingers together, and Bruce’s next groan almost pulls him over the edge. 

He presses his forehead against the back of Tony’s shoulder, every movement more erratic than the last as he falls deeper into Tony—into his heat, into his touch, into the familiar weight of his body under Bruce’s own. He tries to keep breathing, but somehow, like always, it’s Tony’s voice that keeps him grounded as he promises: “Don’t have to keep it in. Don’t have to fight it alone. I’ve _got_ you.”

Bruce sobs when the tension finally breaks, crashing through him like a wave against the shore, and he’s only vaguely aware of Tony shuddering underneath him a few seconds later. They tumble together onto the mattress, their limbs so tangled that Bruce isn’t immediately sure where he ends and Tony begins.

It’s only after they’ve shifted and settled, Bruce flat on his back and Tony propped up on his side, that Tony smiles down at him. “Better?” he asks, his voice like a whisper in the mostly dark of their bedroom.

Bruce draws in a long, half-shuddering breath—and then, honestly, shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, and if there’s something sad in Tony’s smile as he kisses him, they both elect against mentioning it. 

 

==

 

“No,” Amy says, and pushes herself into the corner of the couch.

“Amy,” Jessica warns, her voice sharper than she probably intends, but Amy just shakes her head and pulls her legs up to her chest. She’s wearing leggings with a sweater dress, an outfit she’d picked out specifically because it reminded her of one of Dot’s favorite ensembles, and her hair’s falling out of messy pigtails. In the middle of the couch, Teddy sighs and looks away, studying his hands as his foster sister hides her face behind her knees.

“Let us just explain,” Tony says, his arms resting on the back of one of the living room’s over-stuffed chairs. The words waver, and he swallows around them. 

Amy curls her toes against the couch cushion. “No,” she says again, louder, and Bruce rubs a hand over his face.

The kids and Jessica’d arrived back at the house shortly after Bruce and Tony’d wandered downstairs after showering and changing clothes, and Amy’d spent her first ten minutes at home showing off her treasures from the quarter vending machine: two friendship bracelets, two temporary tattoos, and a sticker of some nearly unknown superhero that she’d promptly stuck to Tony’s shirt. “Because you’re _super_ ,” she’d announced, and giggled at her own joke.

At least, until they’d steered her toward the sofa and sat her down next to Teddy. Until they’d gathered around her—Jessica at the far end of the couch, Miles in one of the armchairs with Tony behind him, Bruce hovering nearby—and she’d realized exactly how intently they were all watching her.

Then, all the mirth’d drained from her face, and she’d stared down at her hands.

And now—

“It’s not going to definitely happen,” Teddy says after a moment, his voice so gentle that Bruce nearly misses it. He twists toward the girl, his hand outstretched, but Amy just pulls her knees closer to her chest. Her fingers dig into her legs, and Bruce tries to stave off the way his heart clenches by glancing away. “It’s a maybe. But until they figure out that I didn’t start the fire, I might have to—”

“So tell them you didn’t!” Amy suddenly shouts, and Bruce jerks his head up. Within seconds, the girl’s off the couch, her hands balled up at her sides as she glares at her foster brother. His face pales, stricken, but when he opens his mouth to protest, she stomps a foot. “You have to tell them, Teddy! You have to tell them you’re not bad, or they’ll think you are! You have to tell them that you didn’t hurt Ed and Sylvie!” 

The last words catch and crack, _almost_ breaking, and when she raises her hand to push hair out of her face, she smears fresh tears over her cheeks and nose. Miles draws his legs up onto his chair, sitting cross-legged and picking at a loose strand of his sock; behind him, Tony reaches out to touch the top of his head in a show of silent comfort.

On the couch, though, Teddy cups his hand over his mouth for a second. “Amy,” he murmurs, “I can’t—”

“No, you have to tell the truth!” Amy breaks in, the tears rolling freely down her face as she jabs a finger in Teddy’s direction. Teddy stares at her, his eyes soft and pleading, but she shakes her head _hard_ even as her whole body trembles. “You said that secrets are only okay if they don’t hurt people but now they hurt!” she tells him, and Bruce rolls his lips together as his own eyes start to dampen. “They hurt, and they’re going to take you away so I _never_ see you again! I won’t have a brother anymore, and I— If you’re not there, I—”

Her shoulders shudder twice before she’s crying in earnest, hiccupping sobs that rack her whole body and leave Teddy to bury his hands in his messy hair. Jessica slides off the couch and moves towards the girl on her knees, her arms outstretched, but Amy immediately jerks away. When she realizes that Bruce is only a few steps behind her, she twists away and backs herself against the empty armchair. 

Jessica sighs and drops her hands into her lap. “Amy, you need to calm down, okay?” she says quietly. “Come over here with me and Teddy, and just _talk_ to us. Nobody’s going anywhere, we just want to—”

“It was Tristan!”

Amy’s voice bursts out like a firework, so loud and _bright_ that Bruce can’t help but jerk his head toward her. Across the room, Tony and Miles are staring too—Tony with his mouth halfway open, Miles with wide, wet-rimmed eyes—and on the floor, Jessica’s whole body slackens. For a second, Bruce swears he hears his own pulse in his ears, a counterpoint rhythm to the churning feeling in the bottom of his stomach.

“Amy,” Teddy says quietly, his face tipped toward the carpet. “Amy, you can’t—”

“But that’s what happened!” Amy shouts, her whole body jolting as she throws her hands out. She glances around the room, her face red and tear-streaked as she searches everyone else’s shocked, stricken expressions. “He messed with fire all the time and he made the house burn down! He did it! He did it and he— He was bad and he did all the bad things, and Teddy tried to make it better but— But he—”

Bruce isn’t sure how he knows she’s about to dissolve into a million pieces, isn’t sure how he lands on his knees just seconds before she crumples, but he’s there and he catches her as she crumbles to the floor. She trembles like a leaf in his grip, her face pressing into his shoulder as she struggles just to breathe around her tears. He presses his face into her hair and tries desperately to calm her as her fingers fist in his shirt. He ends up just rocking her back and forth, a slow, soothing motion as she breaks to tiny pieces against him.

Across the room, Tony covers his mouth with a hand, and Miles swipes at his own damp face.

“We know this is hard, sweetheart,” Jessica says gently, and when Bruce glances over, he discovers that she’s moved across the floor to kneel next to him, her fingers stroking gently over Amy’s back. “We know you’re scared. But right now, making up stories isn’t going to fix anything, and it’s not going to keep Teddy safe. Okay?” Amy’s fingers tighten in Bruce’s shirt, her body trembling even harder, and Jessica sighs as she shakes her head. “No matter how much you want to protect him, lying to us won’t—”

“She’s not lying.”

Teddy’s voice is so quiet, so _resigned_ , that Bruce almost misses it at first, and he stares uncomprehendingly as Jessica twists around to stare at him, her hand falling back into her lap. He’s still bent over on the couch, his elbows resting on his thighs and his fingers buried in his hair, but for the first time all night, there’s a grim sort of resolve etched across his features. For a few long seconds, nothing moves but Amy, her body trembling as she hiccups against Bruce’s neck. But even then, the moment belongs to Teddy as he draws in a breath, scrubs a hand over his face, and looks over at Bruce. 

Not at Miles or Tony, or at his long-time social worker or his terrified, shuddering little sister, but at Bruce, the man he met on the night of the fire.

Teddy wets his lips.

“I didn’t start the fire,” he says, his voice quiet but clear in the near-silence of the living room. “Tristan did.”


	16. The Start of Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony learn the complicated truth about the Pierpont house fire—and the possible complications in Teddy and Amy's shared future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains repeated references to the abuse of a child. It also briefly references potential child sex abuse and accusations of sex abuse, but no such abuse occurred. 
> 
> One beta-reader cried, the other read it in record time. Both are wonderful, but I won't tell you which is Jen and which is saranoh.

“All we need you to do is start from the beginning and tell us, in your own words, what you told Miss Jones last night.”

Ororo Munroe smiles as she says it, her elbows resting on the table and a paper coffee cup dangling from her long fingers. Outside, the late-morning sun glints brightly off the thin layer of late-November snow and forces its way through the half-open interview room blinds, and its fingers stretch across the carpet and the wall opposite the window. At Munroe’s side, Howlett helps himself to one of the cookies in the middle of the table.

Amy wrinkles her nose at him, and he winks. Next to her, Teddy stares down at his soda can. “I don’t even know where the beginning is, anymore,” he says after a beat, his thumb picking at the soda tab. “It’s all such a mess—because of me, mostly—and I don’t—”

“Just go back to where this all kicked off,” Howlett suggests. He’s leaning back, one arm hooked over the back of his chair, but his dark eyes are focused entirely on Teddy. “Because if we know why this all happened, then we can—”

“It happened because Teddy saw Tristan hitting me.” 

Amy’s answer is so certain, so _clear_ after the mess from the night before, that Bruce can’t decide if the rush of warm in his chest is pride or fear. Beside him, Tony reaches down and touches the small of his back, grounding him as they sit on the couch that stretches along the interview room’s far wall. 

At the table, Amy bends her juice box straw back and forth. Whenever she glances up, it’s to eye the tape recorder that’s sitting next to the plate of cookies.

Munroe carefully sets down her coffee cup. “Is that the only time Tristan hit you, that one day?” she asks.

Amy shakes her head. “No, but the first time Teddy saw— That’s how everything started.”

Teddy keeps his head down as he nods, and across the table, Munroe casts a concerned glance over at Howlett. For a few seconds, the partners communicate entirely through microexpressions: raised eyebrows, tiny half-shrugs, pursed lips. 

Finally, though, Munroe shakes her head a little and turns back to the girl. “Can you tell us about Tristan hitting you, Amy?”

Teddy’s jaw tightens. “I don’t see the point of—”

“It’s okay, Teddy,” Amy says, and when Teddy’s head snaps up, she flashes him a little smile. It’s crooked, nervous, and _endlessly_ brave, and the sight of it ties Bruce’s stomach in a knot. 

Next to him, the corner of Tony’s mouth kicks up into a little grin. “That’s our girl,” he mutters under his breath.

Bruce purses his lips. “Technically—”

“No technicalities today, big guy,” Tony cuts him off, and Bruce twists away just in time to watch Amy swing her legs under the interview table. “Today, that’s our girl.”

Tony’d said almost the same exact thing to Amy the night before once the dust’d settled and Amy’s story had faded into a thick, tear-stained silence. He’d gathered her up into his arms and held her, rocking her slightly and whispering a hundred reassurances: _you’re our brave girl, good job, we’re proud of you_. Amy’d hidden her face in his shoulder after that, refusing to come up for air even as Teddy’d confirmed everything that’d happened at the Pierpont house—and then, after he’d filled in the blanks that Amy’d left behind.

“I didn’t think it’d get this bad,” Teddy’d said at the end, his voice catching as he’d wiped his damp cheeks. He’d dug his toe into the carpet and refused to meet anyone’s eyes. “I figured, if I waited, nobody’d ever have to know what happened.”

Still sitting on the floor, her back against the couch and her legs stretched out in front of her, Jessica’d shaken her head. “It’s not that easy.”

“Well, it _should_ be,” Teddy’d retorted sharply. “Kids like me and Amy, after everything we’ve already been through— We shouldn’t have go to through shit like what happened at the Pierponts.”

“And we shouldn’t have uncles who leave us alone and disappear,” Miles’d said softly from the armchair, “but that’s not always the way it goes.”

Teddy’d finally lifted his head, then, and he’d spent a long moment studying his foster brother’s tear-stained face and tight posture. Bruce hadn’t noticed when Miles’d tucked himself up with his knees almost against his chest, but he’d noticed it then, along with the way Miles’s every breath’d trembled. They’d stared each other down before Teddy’d dragged fingers through his hair. “That shouldn’t’ve happened either,” he’d said quietly.

“Yeah, well, it did,” Miles’d replied, and twisted to stare at the wall.

In the end, Miles’d fallen asleep in that chair while Amy dozed off in Tony’s arms, and they’d ended their night by tucking both kids to sleep in the living room. Bruce’d sat next to Miles’s chair and stroked his head gently while Tony and Jessica’d called all the relevant parties—the detectives, Sif, even Mike Peterson. Bruce’d eventually nodded off, too, and woke up around one in the morning to find Teddy sitting in the other armchair, a pillow in his lap.

“Tony said I’m supposed to send you to bed,” he’d said quietly. “Something about reparative cuddles.”

Bruce’d snorted even as he’d rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What about you?”

The teen’d shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping any time soon,” he’d admitted, and Bruce’d watched his fingers dig into the pillow. “Not while my head’s all—” 

He’d gestured lightly in lieu of finishing, and Bruce’d rolled his lips together to keep from smiling. “You look like Tony when you do that,” he’d pointed out.

“There are probably worse role models,” Teddy’d replied, and smiled.

The next morning, Bruce’d discovered Teddy asleep in the chair, his head lolled back as he snored lightly.

“ _That_ is a kid who’s finally found peace with a whole boatload of bullshit,” Tony’d declared as he’d crowded up into Bruce’s personal space. When Bruce’d chuckled, he’d leaned in and kissed the side of his neck. “Coffee. Also, hearty breakfast foods for the younger generation to prepare them for their busy day of answering Munroe and Howlett’s nosy questions.”

“And Miles?” Bruce’d asked.

Tony’d shrugged. “He can have breakfast too if he wants,” he’d said, and he’d grinned when Bruce’d rolled his eyes.

For once, Miles’d agreed to skip out on his school day to spend time at the district attorney’s office. Bruce’s last text message from Darcy had included no fewer than eight photos of Miles helping with filing, shredding, copying, and charming Jemma Simmons.

 _she thinks he’s super adorbs_ , Darcy’d explained, and Bruce’d smiled as he’d tucked his cell phone back into his pocket.

Right now, though, the only adorable thing is the way Amy tucks her hair behind her ears and draws her legs up to sit cross-legged in her chair.

“Tristan was really nice when I first started living with Ed and Sylvie,” she says after another beat, still playing with her juice box straw. “I was only five, so he was a lot bigger than me, but we played together. Sylvie said that she and Ed wanted other babies but that it’d never happened. She said Tristan wanted a little sister or brother all to himself.” She glances over at Munroe. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so it was fun to have a big brother.”

Munroe nods and leans back in her chair. “But it didn’t stay that way?”

Amy shakes her head. “No.”

“What happened?”

The girl rolls her lips together for a second, her one knee bouncing, and Bruce swallows around the nervous feeling that creeps into the back of his throat. He and Tony’d tried to prepare both kids for the interview on the drive over, talking about the question-and-answer format, about adding relevant details, about not being afraid if the detectives acted like they didn’t believe what actually happened. Amy’d nodded along with their explanation, but now, Bruce worries that she might not have taken it all to heart.

“Amy,” Teddy says gently, and touches her knee. “If you don’t want to talk about—”

“I don’t know what happened,” she blurts suddenly, and next to her, Teddy frowns. She huffs a breath at him. “I don’t know why Tristan turned mean,” she clarifies, and looks back at Munroe and Howlett. “He never told me. He just— One day, we were playing, and he said we had to try a new game where I had to do everything he asked. Like Simon Says, but without the magic words.”

Howlett snorts slightly. “You like Simon Says?” he asks.

Amy sparks a tiny grin. “I’m better at it than Miles,” she brags, and Tony snickers so loudly that he’s forced to cover his mouth with a hand. Amy twists around to flash a grin at him, and she giggles when he winks at her. Bruce smiles, but he also raises his eyebrows until Amy shifts back around in her chair. “But Tristan’s game wasn’t Simon Says,” she tells the detectives seriously. “And he could ask me to do anything.”

Munroe’s fingers flex slightly around her coffee cup. “Like?”

“Like clean up his room, or give him my dessert, or take things from the snack drawer for him even though we only got _one_ snack.” Howlett’s mouth curls into a small smile, but Amy just ducks her head. “He made me take things from a store, one time,” she says quietly. “Sylvie and Ed got really mad about it, but Tristan thought it was funny.”

“Did he make Teddy play the game?” Munroe asks.

Amy shakes her head. “No, we only played the game ‘til I messed it up. Teddy moved in after.”

Howlett leans forward to rest his elbows on the table. “How’d you mess up the game?”

“I didn’t play it right.”

“Not right how?” Amy fidgets slightly, and Howlett purses his lips for a beat. “Is it ‘cause you didn’t follow the rules? Because I get not following the rules.”

Amy chews on her lower lip for a moment before she glances up at him. “Kind of,” she admits, pushing curls out of her face. “The first time I didn’t listen to Tristan, he said I got three ‘freebies’ before things would get really bad. He didn’t say what it meant, he just said that bad things would happen. I listened all the time ‘til he made me start taking things from stores. Then I started telling him no.”

Next to her, Teddy swallows noticeably, his knuckles tightening their grip on his soda can. Munroe just offers her a small, sincere smile. “You told him no four times?” she asks gently.

Amy nods. “He wanted candy at the store,” she says softly, “but Sylvie said no because he’d been bad all day. He told me to take the candy he wanted and put it in my pocket, and I said no. I remembered how mad Ed and Sylvie were the first time and I didn’t want them to get that mad again. Tristan said I’d used up all my freebies and that the game’d change if I didn’t do what he said.”

“But you said no?” Munroe presses.

Amy shifts to pull her legs up to her chest before she nods again. “When we got home and Sylvie started cooking dinner, he pushed me down really hard,” she says, almost whispering. “I started crying, but he said I had to be quiet because he’d just tell Sylvie I fell down by myself. I told him I’d tell on him, and he said that Sylvie and Ed’d think I was a liar and make me move away.” Her voice quivers, and she draws in a big, shaky breath. “I didn’t want to move away, so I promised not to tell. And he said from then until forever, the game was the same except he’d hurt me if I didn’t follow the rules.” She swallows before she peeks up at Munroe and Howlett, and Bruce’s heart stutters when he realizes her eyes are damp again. “He was really mean.”

Munroe nods slightly, clearly formulating her next question, but Teddy shoots her a single, sharp look until she decides to sip her coffee instead. When he reaches over to comb fingers through Amy’s hair, she jumps a little, but her whole body softens when she realizes who’s comforting her. She leans into the touch, her eyes closing for a moment, and Teddy chuckles at her.

“You’re worse than Jarvis,” he teases.

“You’re smellier than Jarvis,” Amy shoots back, and Howlett snorts a laugh. She grins a little at that as she glances back over at the detectives. “Jarvis is my kitty,” she explains.

Teddy frowns at her. “You mean he’s Miles’s kitty.”

“No, he likes me better so he’s mine now,” Amy corrects him, and he rolls his eyes even as he huffs a laugh.

She preens at that, puffing her chest out like Tony after a particularly groan-worthy joke, and Teddy ruffles her curls before he helps himself to another cookie. Amy holds her hand out, and he sighs at her before handing _her_ one, as well. She twists it apart and starts picking off the cream filling before Munroe finally asks, “Did Tristan follow the new rules of his game?”

Amy pauses and stares down at her cookie. “Yeah.”

“And you kept playing the new game until Teddy moved in?”

“Yeah.” She sucks the cream off her finger before she leans back in her chair again, her arms settling around her tucked-up legs. “But that’s when the game got meaner.”

Howlett frowns. “Meaner how?” he asks, reaching for his mostly untouched coffee. 

“Tristan didn’t like Teddy,” Amy answers. She casts a cautious look over at Teddy, but Teddy just nods. “He called Teddy a bunch of names Teddy says I’m not allowed to say. And when Ed and Sylvie heard and yelled at him, he’d ask me to do _really_ bad stuff.”

On the couch, Tony stills, and Bruce’s stomach churns. When he slides his hand into Tony’s grip, Tony squeezes until it almost hurts. Munroe flicks her gaze over at them before she glances back to Amy. “What kind of really bad stuff?” she asks quietly.

Amy casts her eyes down at her knees. “Like taking stuff from Ed and Sylvie and hiding it,” she says. “Taking things from other people’s mailboxes when we walked home from the school bus so he could burn them all up. Ripping up my homework so I wouldn’t have it and get in trouble.” She picks at the seam of her leggings. “I hated that the most, because Miss Hill looked so sad.”

Munroe and Howlett exchange a long glance before Howlett clears his throat. “Did Tristan ever ask you to do anything _with_ him?” he asks after a few beats. When Amy jerks her head up, there’s confusion inching across her expression, and the detective wets his lips. “Like, did he ever corner you when you two were alone and ask you to—”

Amy’s still squinting when realization dawns across Teddy’s face, and he shakes his head. “No,” he answers quickly, and both detectives turn to stare at him. He grips his soda can hard enough that the aluminum crinkles. “We had this talk when I found out what was happening,” he says, “and he never did anything like that. Amy promised me she’d tell me if he did.”

Amy tilts her head at Teddy and frowns. “Are they asking about bad touching?” she questions. When he forces a little smile before nodding, she immediately turns back to face Howlett. “Tristan never bad-touched me,” she assures him, and Tony’s exhale sounds like a gale force wind. He tangles his fingers together with Bruce’s, and Bruce strokes his thumb. “He hit and kicked and one time put a chair in front of the closet so I had to stay there, but he never touched me in the bad way.”

“Except for hitting you,” Tony mutters, and Bruce knocks their shoulders together until his husband leans against him.

Munroe lets Amy finish her cookie before she asks, “But Teddy found out Tristan was hitting you?” 

Amy nods. “Yeah.”

“How’d that happen?”

The girl dips her head again, picking cookie crumbs off her leggings while both officers stare her down. After a few seconds, Teddy fidgets and starts to answer, but Howlett holds up a hand to silence him. The teen scowls and crosses his arms over his chest.

On the couch, Bruce swallows thickly and waits.

“Tristan wanted to play the game,” Amy finally says in a tiny, half-lost murmur. “He wanted me to go into Teddy’s room and take out all his notes from Billy.” Teddy blinks in surprise, the tips of his ears immediately reddening. When he shifts toward Amy, she quickly adds, “I never looked at them. I know I’m not allowed. But Tristan liked playing with matches, and he said they’d be really easy to burn up, so he told me to go get them.”

“Or else?” Howlett asks.

Her head bobs again. “Ed and Sylvie had a meeting at Tristan’s school and went away that night,” she continues after a beat, “so they went away and left me and Tristan home with Teddy. Teddy was doing homework, but he came downstairs when Tristan was hitting me.”

“He had a wooden spoon,” Teddy says darkly, and Amy immediately hides her face behind her knees. On the couch, Tony shifts his weight until he’s balanced on the very edge of the cushion. For a split second, Bruce expects him to leap to Amy’s rescue and gather her into his arms. He only deflates when Bruce touches the middle of his back, and even then, he scrubs hands over his face. 

Bruce feels just sick enough that he considers pressing his own face against Tony’s shoulder. He settles for stroking small circles along Tony’s back, instead.

“How often did he use stuff like that?” Howlett asks, and Bruce, like Amy and Teddy, stares at the floor.

“Just when Ed and Sylvie weren’t home,” Amy murmurs, and hugs her knees.

“And never again after that night,” Teddy blurts, and both detectives glance over at him just as he uncrosses his arms. He drags his fingers through his hair before he leans all the way forward, his arms on the table. He fiddles with his bracelets—some of them from Billy, some of them from Dot and Amy’s bracelet-making extravaganza weeks ago—before he finally shakes his head. “I told him that if he touched her again, I’d tell his parents,” he explains, finally looking up. “He said he’d accuse me of mo—‘bad touching’ him if I said anything and that his parents’d believe him over me.”

Howlett hooks an arm over the back of his chair. “And you believed the kid?”

“Yes and no,” Teddy admits. Howlett cocks an eyebrow, and the teen sighs. “When there’s an accusation like that in a foster home, somebody always investigates,” he says. “When I was, I don’t know, thirteen, my foster parents found out I’d looked at some, uh, pictures on the computer, and it ended in an investigation and me getting pulled. Not good for the younger kids at the house, or whatever.” 

When Howlett snorts—good naturedly, Bruce thinks, because he’s smiling, too—the tips of Teddy’s ears flare bright red. “They investigate that kind of thing these days?” 

“They do when you’re a guy looking at guys, I guess,” Teddy replies, and Howlett’s smile disappears. 

Munroe, on the other hand, leans forward slightly, her hands folding in her lap. “If you knew they would investigate, why didn’t you let them?” she asks, and Teddy drops his eyes down to the table top. “They look into Tristan’s accusation, you reveal what he’s doing, everyone is removed from a dangerous situation. Sounds straight forward to me.”

Teddy rolls his lips together for a moment, and his jaw works as he swallows. It’s Amy, her chin atop her knees, who answers, “Because Teddy didn’t want us to get broke up.” 

Teddy’s mouth kicks up into a tiny smile. “Broken,” he corrects.

Amy wrinkles her nose. “That’s what I _said_.”

Next to Bruce, Tony snorts and flashes a brief, proud grin. “They sound like you and your grammatical obsessions,” he comments, and Bruce smiles even as he rolls his eyes.

“There was no guarantee you’d be broken up, though, was there?” Munroe asks, and Tony nudges Bruce’s knee once before he shifts his attention back to the interview. Teddy nods as he sips his soda. “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to tell Miss Jones and let the chips fall where they may?”

“I’m a three-time loser when it comes to disrupting,” he admits with a shrug. “You get that kind of reputation when you’re in foster care, you kind of don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. And Ed and Sylvia— They were great, but they loved Tristan more than anything in the world.” He shakes his head. “It’s a hard battle to win.”

“So you thought it’d all end with nobody suffering any consequences for their bad behavior?” Howlett asks.

“More or less,” Teddy answers. He turns the soda can around in his hands for a second before he glances back at the detective. “Or, worse, that Tristan’d come up clean but I’d still be moved because of my so-called false accusation.”

Howlett nods then, reaching for his mostly empty coffee cup, and Munroe sighs. She leans back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest, and studies Teddy carefully. Teddy plays with his can, not really meeting her eyes, his lower lip pinned between his teeth.

Finally, though, Munroe shifts her weight just enough that she can tip her head and find Teddy’s eyes. “I want to make sure I understand everything that was happening in this house,” she says carefully, and Teddy swallows audibly. “Tristan was abusing Amy and threatening you. You wanted to keep it a secret to protect Amy and yourself.”

“Mostly Amy,” Teddy says defensively.

She raises a hand. “Mostly Amy,” she agrees, and Teddy’s shoulders soften. “Ed and Sylvia didn’t know, I take it?”

Teddy nods. “Right.”

“They knew I did bad things sometimes,” Amy volunteers. Munroe jerks her head over to where Amy’s now sitting cross-legged, her juice box straw dangling between her teeth. Bruce smiles a little at that, and again when Tony bumps their shoulders together. “That I took things. That I lied sometimes.” She pauses and thumbs at the edge of the table. “They didn’t know it was because Tristan made me.”

“Is that why they thought you took the necklace?” Howlett asks suddenly. Munroe and Teddy both frown, but he ignores them both to lean all the way forward, his arms stretching along the table. “Ed and Sylvia thought you took a necklace, right?” he asks, and Amy nods hesitantly. “Everybody got in a big fight about it. Did you take it ‘cause Tristan told you to?”

“No,” Amy answers with a little shake of her head. “But Tristan blamed me when Ed and Sylvie asked him about it first.”

“He did a lot of that,” Teddy offers, flopping back in his chair. “After I said he couldn’t boss Amy around like that anymore, he spent a lot of time trying to pin his stuff on her. Like stealing things from the bedrooms, eating junk food—”

“Playing with matches,” Amy murmurs.

Teddy rolls his lips together at that, suddenly silent, and the little girl stares down at her fingers as she twirls hair around them. Across the table, the detectives exchange careful glances before, slowly, Howlett rises. “I’m gonna grab your attorney for this next part,” he says as he starts collecting the empty coffee cups on the table, and Teddy forces a tiny smile. “You want anything?”

Amy immediately perks up. “Can I have more juice?”

Howlett shrugs. “Depends on if your folks are cool with it.”

The girl’s whole face lights up as she whips around, and despite himself, Bruce snorts a laugh. “You can have more juice,” he assures her, and then works to ignore the way his chest seizes at her beaming smile.

“In fact, you can have _all_ the juice,” Tony chimes in. “A metric boatload of juice. Do I own stock in Hi-C? I feel like, with a seven-year-old in my life, that’s an acquisition worth—”

“They’re owned by Coke.” Tony snaps his mouth shut, but not before he gapes openly at Munroe and her tiny, knowing smile. Howlett hides his laugh behind an obviously fake cough as he lets himself out of the interview room, but his partner just shrugs. “I know stocks.”

“You are a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and I don’t think I like it,” Tony informs her, and for the first time since they left the house that morning, Teddy _actually_ laughs.

Amy, however, scowls at all of them. “Do I still get juice?” she asks, and this time, Bruce is the one who can’t stop himself from laughing aloud.

Howlett returns about ten minutes later with coffee, soda, a juice box, and Sif Rowan. The attorney’s in casual clothes—jeans, blouse, and suit coat—but she still holds herself like some sort of Disney queen as she strides over to Teddy’s side of the table and crouches down next to his chair. They murmur quietly to one another while Howlett passes out the drinks—including, surprisingly, a cup of green tea for Bruce. The detective’s still helping Amy with her straw when Sif straightens up and brushes off her jeans. 

“My client will not answer anything that might incriminate him in a crime,” she says curtly.

Munroe raises a hand. “We’re not here for that.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Sif returns, and Teddy hides his smile behind a sip of his new soda as his attorney joins Bruce and Tony on the couch.

Once everyone’s settled with their drinks and, for Amy, yet another cookie, Teddy releases a long, uneven breath. “I didn’t know Tristan liked fire when I first moved in,” he says seriously, and Howlett nudges the tape recorder a couple inches closer to him. “Even after he hit Amy, I— I don’t know, I guess I assumed his bad behavior started and ended with beating up on little kids.”

“But?” Howlett asks expectantly.

Teddy drags his fingers through his messy hair. “But I was wrong,” he admits, and reaches down to toy with his new soda can. “A month or two before the fire,” he says after a few long seconds, “I caught him in the back yard. He’d started a fire in one of the plastic trash cans and kept dumping lighter fluid on it. It was taller than me when I got there, and by the time I dragged the hose out—” He shakes his head. “He begged me not to tell his parents, so we told them that we’d broken into the leftover Fourth of July sparklers and threw one out without checking that it wasn’t still lit. I had to work off the price of the trash can doing chores.”

“And you never told anyone about this?” Munroe presses.

“Who could I tell? Besides, I’d never seen him do it before, so I figured . . . ” He trails off, focusing on his hands rather than on other detective. “Amy told me about wanting to burn the letters later,” he adds, “but I thought it was all just stupid kid stuff. Who doesn’t play with matches when they’re still in grade school?”

“I don’t,” Amy volunteers. Tony’s strangled laugh earns a warning glance from both Bruce _and_ Sif, but Howlett just smirks as he sips his coffee. Amy, apparently proud of herself, just grins. “My teacher Miss Hill says fire’s dangerous.”

“She’s not wrong,” Tony mutters, and Bruce nudges him until he purses his lips and falls silent.

At the table, Teddy smiles a little. When he reaches over to poke Amy in the side, she wriggles almost all the way out of her chair. “He didn’t burn anything in front of me again until a week or two before the fire,” he continues once Amy’s righted herself. “Sylvia had to run an errand, so she left Amy and Tristan with me. I went upstairs and smelled something burning.” He leans back in his chair and sighs. “He was burning old baseball cards in his bedroom trash can. I made him stop and took his matches.” He pauses. “I told him if I caught him again, I’d tell his parents.”

Howlett sips his coffee. “He threaten you again?”

Teddy nods. “I— By then, I’d been at Ed and Sylvia’s for a long time,” he says haltingly, his voice sticky as he runs his thumbnail along the edge of the table. “I’d put up with a lot of Tristan’s crap. His intimidation techniques, his stupid threats, the way he picked on Amy. I’d started kind of keeping track of what he did, I guess you could say. Writing it down so if he ever did something really awful, I’d have a record of it.”

Munroe rests her elbows on the table. “Where’s that record now?” she asks.

He snorts. “Ashes, probably? The notebook was in the house with everything else. But Kate, Billy, America, they all know about it. I was telling them, so I’d have backup.”

“Corroboration, you mean,” Howlett provides, and Teddy nods again. The detective swigs from his coffee cup before he stretches back in his chair, his ankles folded under the table. Bruce knows that maneuver, knows how Howlett likes to make himself comfortable before asking his hardest questions, and immediately, his heart leaps into his throat.

Next to him, Tony’s leg starts to jump nervously. Bruce reaches over and slides his hand along his thigh, presses his palm to his husband’s inseam just to calm him. 

Tony’s mouth twitches into a tiny smile, but otherwise, the comfort fails.

Finally, though, Howlett nudges his coffee cup away from the table’s edge. “You weren’t at the house when the fire happened, were you?”

Teddy wets his lips. The breath he draws in shakes audibly. “No, I wasn’t.”

“You skipped out of the house to run around with Kate Bishop and America Chavez, didn’t you?”

“No, I went out to tell them about the fight we all got into,” Teddy says curtly. Across the table, Munroe raises her eyebrows, and the teen huffs as he scrubs his palms over his face. “Everybody was so geared up about the stupid necklace,” he explains, frustration seeping into his voice as he lets his hands drop back onto the tabletop. “Ed and Sylvie thought for sure Amy took it, and the whole time, Tristan smirked at me like the cat who ate the bird, you know?”

Amy smiles around her juice box straw. “Sylvester.”

Bruce grins momentarily, but Teddy’s lips barely twitch. “Sylvester never caught the bird, but sure,” he says, a little dismissively. Amy wrinkles her nose at that, but falls silently as her foster brother sighs. “Kate, America, Billy, and David—he’s a friend from school, he’s not in the system at all—were sort of my sounding board when it came to telling Jessica about Tristan. I walked down to the end of the street once everybody in the house was asleep, and Kate picked me up. We spent a couple hours at the doughnut shop.”

Munroe starts to frown, her brow creasing, but Howlett releases a sort of snickering laugh. “Your text messages don’t make sense ‘cause you were talking about Oak Street and doughnut holes,” he says. His partner narrows her eyes at him, and he shrugs. “He wrote about ‘holes in the old Oak down the block,’ remember? Code, just like when you passed notes to your friends back during boarding school.”

“We hardly passed notes,” Munroe defends.

“Funny that McCoy tells a totally different story,” Howlett responds, and he smirks as he sips his coffee.

Munroe rolls her eyes, but across from her, Teddy nods seriously. “Our group texts were usually in code so Eli’s grandma—who checks his phone a lot—couldn’t tell what we were talking about. Kate and Cassie came up with the system, we just all kind of used it.” He sighs quietly. “When I came home, the house was already on fire. I thought I could grab everybody, but I— I couldn’t—”

The words catch in the back of his throat, and when he reaches for his soda, his hand shakes. Bruce casts his eyes down at his tea in hopes of steadying his own nerves, but Tony nudges his arm until he glances back up. He discovers then that Amy’s shifted to kneel on her chair, her fingers carding through Teddy’s thick hair. The teen smiles shakily.

“You’re a good brother,” Amy murmurs.

Teddy snorts damply and pokes her in the nose. “You’re a good sister,” he replies, and she beams like he’s just hung the moon.

Bruce’s stomach twists, but not nearly as painfully as his heart.

“What I’m still struggling with is how you got Amy out of there,” Howlett says. Teddy jerks his head up roughly, and the detective raises his hands. “You did good there,” he defends, “but I’ve looked at the fire marshal’s report, and they’re _still_ not sure where the fire started ‘cause of how badly the second floor was damaged. I can’t imagine you running into the middle of that blaze to grab Amy out of her room, especially since it was on the side of the house that burned first.”

At the end of the couch, Sif stops writing on her legal pad, her grip tightening on her pen. Tony’s leg starts jumping again, faster than before, and Bruce’s lungs tighten until he thinks he’ll suffocate on his own fear. 

But at the table, Amy just shrugs. “I wasn’t sleeping in my room,” she says as she sinks back into her own chair. 

“You weren’t?” Munroe questions with a frown.

The girl shakes her head. “When things were bad with Tristan, Teddy let me sleep on his floor ‘til I felt brave enough to sleep in my own bed.” She tucks her hands between her legs and stares down at the table. “Everybody was sad and yelling when we went to bed, and I didn’t want to sleep right by Tristan’s room. So me and Joey—”

“The kangaroo,” Tony volunteers from the couch, and Howlett’s mouth tips into a smile.

“—went and slept in Teddy’s room.” Amy pushes her hair out of her face with her shoulder before she glances back at the detectives. “And his room was far away from mine, so it was safe.”

“At the other end of the hall,” Teddy says quietly. His fingers flex around his soda can, and Bruce’s chest suddenly aches. The teen shakes his head. “I don’t know where the fire started, but the only room that wasn’t already all the way on fire was mine, and I— All I could do was grab Amy before it all . . . ”

He trails off, his shaking fingers rising to sweep the dampness off the tops of his cheeks, and next to him, Amy leans over and rests her forehead against his arm. Bruce’s entire body twitches, desperate to gather them up in his arms and hug them _both_ until they’re safe, but he knows he can’t. Not yet, at least, and the thought leaves his own eyes prickling with tears.

Tony tips into his space just far enough to press his cheek to his shoulder. Despite his best judgment, Bruce twists his head just enough to kiss Tony’s head and bury his nose in his hair.

The contact only lasts a second, though, because then Munroe leans forward. Her face is thoughtful, almost placid, and Bruce watches as she rolls her lips together. “We’ll need to look into this,” she says gently, and Teddy’s throat bobs even as he nods. “We’ll need to see if there’s anything out there that proves that Tristan might’ve done this. Especially since you never told anyone that—”

“It wasn’t going to help anybody.” Teddy’s voice and breath both tremble as he raises his eyes to meet Munroe’s, and for the first time since the initial interview with Teddy all those weeks ago, something like compassion flashes across her expression. “Sylvie was maybe going to live, and I didn’t want her to wake up and find out that her son died _and_ tried to kill everybody else. And then— I don’t know, they were all gone, and I hadn’t done _anything_ to stop it, and I just— I thought—” He shakes his head, swiping at the tears that roll off his chin. “It’s my fault, too,” he murmurs, and the only thing that keeps Bruce rooted to the couch is Tony’s firm hand on his arm. “Tristan started the fire, but I didn’t stop him. And that makes it my fault, too.”

In the next thirty seconds, Bruce is aware of a dozen different, unimportant things: the sound of his half-filled cup tipping over as he sets it on the floor, the scrape of Howlett’s chair as he shifts his position, Sif asking if the interview’s over. But none of these things matter as much as when Amy shoves back her chair so she can crawl into Teddy’s lap and grip him around the neck—or when Tony finally releases Bruce’s arm. The second he’s off the couch, Teddy reaches for him like a lost child, and suddenly, it’s the three of them—Bruce, the boy who held his work identification on the night of the fire, and the shy little girl with the stuffed kangaroo.

But that only lasts for a second, because then, Tony’s there too, raising the number to four.

Four-fifths of their family, Bruce thinks without hesitation, and he hugs the kids tighter to drown out the sound of his traitorous, _certain_ heart. 

 

== 

 

“And then,” Amy explains smugly, “they said I was the best girl and we should all live happily ever after.”

She holds another fork out to Miles expectantly, but he crosses his arms over his chest. The dinner table’s only half-set, thanks in part to Amy’s sometimes-atrocious counting skills (she’d counted out six spoons and three knives for complicated and unknown reasons) and Miles’s phone-based distractibility. His phone’s now on top of the refrigerator, and Bruce is vetting all utensil counts.

But that hardly stops his son from tipping his head to one side and saying, “The detectives didn’t actually call you the best girl.”

Amy shrugs, but there’s a coy smile playing across her face. “You weren’t there.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. I mean, the dads watch a _lot_ of cop TV.”

“If by ‘a lot,’ you mean _Sleepy Hollow_ , then yes,” Tony offers as he tries to stick his nose in the pot of pasta sauce. Bruce raises an eyebrow, and his husband _slowly_ backs away. “And even if Miles wasn’t there, I was, and there was sadly _no_ mention of your clear superiority over all other girls in the world.” He reaches over to ruffle Amy’s hair, but she ducks out of the way and nearly bowls Miles over. Bruce rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, too. “Now, please finish setting the table so I can eat dinner sometime this century.”

“There’s a lot of century left, you know,” Miles comments, and Amy squeals with laughter when Tony, maturely, gives his son a noogie.

Bruce shakes his head at all three of them and ducks his head back toward the stove mostly to hide his own laughter. Miles’d requested a huge Italian feast for dinner: meatballs _and_ chicken, two kinds of sauce, a whole lot of pasta, and breadsticks. “You know there’s not an Olive Garden in our house, right?” Tony’d asked after Miles’d finished his request, his shoulder propped against Bruce’s office doorjamb. “You can’t just request an endless pasta bowl and expect your dad and I to roll over and—”

“I like pasta,” Amy’d volunteered from where she’d been watering Bruce’s office plants out of her water bottle. Miles’d cocked his head smugly and _almost_ smiled. 

Tony’d raised his hands. “I retract my previous statement and hope to every deity available that the grocery store’s not out of fresh garlic.”

“Or out of anything else on our list,” Bruce’d reminded him, and predictably, Tony’d waved him off.

Amy and Miles had spent the rest of the work day with Bruce, ducking in and out of his office between their visits to the other attorneys. Tony, blessed with both more vacation hours (how, Bruce is _still_ not sure) and less work, had dragged Teddy off to help with grocery shopping. Bruce’d guessed that the errand had less to do with their need for food and more to do with removing Teddy from the law enforcement atmosphere, but he’d kept that thought to himself.

“Should I be worried that the girl kid is helping Darcy build a fort _under_ her desk?” Clint’d asked at one point. Bruce’d stopped rooting around in the break room cabinets, and his friend’d shrugged. “Because I think they stole that blanket Jane keeps in her bottom drawer. Definitely printed out a _no boys allowed_ sign.”

Bruce’d smiled a little as he continued his search for non-dairy creamer. “As long as it keeps her out of trouble.”

“Since when’s the angel-faced foster kid trouble?” 

“Since when was I referring to Amy?” Bruce’d replied, and Clint’d choked on a mouthful of coffee.

With over a dozen other people looking after Amy and Miles—entertaining them, amusing them, accompanying them on trips down to the basement to visit both Rhodey and the heavily caffeinated IT girl whose name Bruce always forgets—it’d been easy to relax and forget about all the worries of that morning. For hours, Bruce’d chased all of Ororo Munroe’s warnings from his mind and basked in the glow of finishing his work without all the internal distractions from the last few weeks: fear, helplessness, dread. He’d really only remembered all of it after he’d corralled both kids out of the office and into the elevator, and even then, it’d taken Amy’s careful head-tilt to remind him. 

“Will the detective find out everything by tomorrow?” she’d asked.

He’d blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“The lady detective said that she had to talk to people before she could say that Teddy didn’t do anything wrong.” Uncertainty’d crept into her voice, and she’d ducked her head down to stare at her toes. “Will she know tomorrow?”

Bruce’d swallowed thickly. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he’d said, and when he’d stroked her hair, she’d leaned heavily against him.

Even with Amy laughing behind him—Tony’s apparently moved onto her, tickling her as she squirms and almost litters the floor with silverware—the memory rushes back to Bruce, and he forces himself to focus on finishing dinner. Intellectually, he knows that his hands are tied until Howlett and Munroe thoroughly investigate Teddy’s claims and discuss their findings with the special prosecutor. 

Emotionally, he—

“Is that garlic bread?” someone asks suddenly, and Bruce jerks himself out of his thoughts to find Teddy looming over his shoulder, his nose raised in the air like one of the dogs on a scent. He looks for a moment like his mouth might water, and Bruce resists his urge to grin. “I figured you’d just slice up the bread, not—”

“Bake it into delectable goodness reserved only for the master and commander of this household?” Tony hoists himself up onto the counter at Bruce’s side, ignoring Bruce’s eye-roll _and_ his wooden spoon as he peers at the still-frying meatballs. “Because, as I routinely remind the other small people in this house, all of the bread here is my bread, and there is _none_ for Gretchen Wieners.”

Miles stops bringing down glasses long enough to groan. “You’re way too old to quote _Mean Girls_.”

Tony shrugs. “Classics never go out of style.”

“And not even a classic such as yourself can eat two pans of garlic bread on his own,” Bruce points out.

Teddy and Miles both snicker, but Tony just screws his face up into an expression that’s half-scowl, half-pout, and _all_ huffy, overblown hurt. “It’s like you forget that you’re also forty,” he says, and Bruce purses his lips to hide his smirk. “And, anyway, I love garlic bread almost as much as I love you, so—”

“You’ll enjoy sleeping alone until you sweat all the garlic out?” Teddy asks. This time, Miles laughs aloud, and Tony turns his offended face on his son rather than his husband. Teddy just lifts a shoulder. “I mean, Bruce is nice and all, but he’s not nice enough to sleep next to a guy who smells like he wants to ward off half the cast of _Twilight_.”

Bruce bites back his laugh, but he can’t help the mirth in his voice when he says, “He’s not wrong.”

“Says the king of curry,” Tony retorts, and Bruce squirms away before Tony can successfully pinch his hip.

“But I don’t understand.” When Bruce (and, presumably, everyone else) glances over, he discovers that Amy’s planted herself in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips while Miles attempts to hand her a glass. The second he wiggles it in front of her face, she pushes it away and glares at him. “You didn’t tell me why your daddies wouldn’t sleep together because of bread, so now I’m asking them.”

Teddy covers his mouth to keep from laughing, but Miles just rolls his eyes. “It’s because it makes my dad stinkier than you,” he answers nonchalantly, and steps around her to go place the glasses on the table.

Amy scowls. “I’m not stinky!”

“Actually, now that Miles mentions it, you kind of are,” Teddy muses. Amy immediately whirls to face him, and he holds up his hands. “No offense or anything, but you did skip two baths this week.”

“That doesn’t make me stinky!”

“Luckily, there’s an easy way to test this theory,” Tony says as he slides off the counter. Amy peers up at him, her whole face creased in a frown as he bends down and shoves his nose into her hair. Teddy rolls his lips together to hide his grin, Miles snorts a laugh into one of the glasses (and then sets it in front of Tony’s place setting), and Tony—

Tony recoils like someone’s slapped him across the face and immediately pinches his nose. “That,” he declares, “is some Olympic-level stink you’ve got going on there.”

Both boys burst into raucous laughter—brother laughter, Bruce thinks, barely containing his own grin—and Amy scowls at all of them. “I smell pretty, not gross!” she declares. She ducks Tony’s attempt to sniff her again and before Bruce can brace himself, she collides into his legs and grabs him around the waist. He stumbles, but she just hooks her fingers in the pockets of his pants. “Tell them I smell nice,” she instructs.

Something soft and warm rushes through Bruce then like an unexpected spring breeze, and he reaches down to stroke a hand over her messy hair. “You definitely smell better than Tony after garlic,” he promises.

She preens, but Tony wrinkles his nose. “Traitor.”

“Amy’s not requesting kisses every five minutes. _You_ , on the other hand . . . ”

He leaves the comment floating in the air as he finishes stirring the pasta sauce, but Tony apparently recognizes an invitation when he hears one. Within seconds, he’s shooed Amy away to reel Bruce in for a kiss, and even as Bruce rolls his eyes, he submits. Miles groans dramatically as Tony’s hand (showily) slips under the back of Bruce’s shirt, and when Amy squawks, Bruce _knows_ it’s because one of the boys has covered her eyes. But he ignores their scrabbling and complaining to enjoy Tony for a moment: his proximity, his warmth, and the familiar half-moon of his smile against Bruce’s mouth.

Then, the oven timer sounds and forces Bruce to back away. Tony grins at him, his eyes bright and dancing, and he winks knowingly before he starts shutting off stove burners and gathering serving bowls. Teddy falls into line, too, and pretty soon, they’ve started an assembly line of pots, pans, and oven mitts.

Already at the table, Amy asks, “How come Tony never cooks?”

Miles snorts. “Because fast food costs money,” he answers, and laughs when Tony flicks sauce in his general direction. 

By some small miracle, Bruce wrangles all four children (because Tony _absolutely_ counts) around what is technically their breakfast table. Tony only rolls his eyes once when Amy suggests they say grace—“Remind me to call the Rogers-Barneses about this,” he grumbles, and Bruce is fairly sure Teddy helps him kick his husband under the table—and Miles actually leaves his plate alone all the way through Amy’s rambling prayer. They feast on two kinds of pasta with two types of sauce, chicken breast dusted in bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, fat meatballs, and Tony’s beloved bread that he grudgingly shares. Amy swings her legs under the table and pretends not to feed the dogs, Miles smears sauce across his chin at least twice, and Teddy—

Teddy sits with relaxed shoulders, laughing at Tony’s stories and Miles’s sarcastic interjections, and he fills himself with food.

He’s a different kid than he’s been over the last few weeks, and despite himself, Bruce can’t stop smiling.

 

==

 

“Before I say anything,” Jessica Jones says, her hands held out in front of her like a white flag of surrender, “I want you to know that the ball is about ninety percent in your court. Like, unless there’s a direct order from somebody above me, this decision’s totally up to you, and I will sign off on it either way.”

The house is warm, quiet, and still smells vaguely of garlic bread as Bruce nods and tries to relax back into his seat at the breakfast nook. Upstairs, Miles and Amy rest peacefully in their beds, asleep and totally dead to the world after some of the longest days of their young lives; down here, music drifts out of Teddy’s bedroom, almost too quiet to hear. Together, the kids’d all cleaned up dinner and helped Tony put away leftovers, a regular after-dinner assembly line that’d only broken one glass. 

“Miles did it,” Amy’d said after Tony’d physically removed her (bare feet and all) from the scene of the crime.

“Because you didn’t dry your hands off before you handed it to me,” Miles’d shot back. He’d sounded more embarrassed than frustrated as he’d trudged toward the laundry room to find the broom. “I told you, glass gets slippery and if you don’t dry your hands—”

“You’ll forget that your dad’s a millionaire and can literally buy several _thousand_ more glasses.” Miles’d paused to glance back at Tony, but he’d just shrugged. “Just like my folks used to say: no use crying over broken place settings.”

Teddy’d grinned. “Pretty sure that’s not the saying.”

“You grow up in the Stark household, that’s _always_ the saying,” Tony’d retorted, and Miles’d actually sort of laughed before he’d collected the broom.

Bruce smiles as he thinks about it, his thumb tracing the Stark Industries logo on his coffee mug. Next to him, Tony stretches out like he’s king of both the universe and the kitchen nook, his arm stretching out behind Bruce. Only Bruce seems to notice the way he fidgets or how intently he drums his fingertips against the back of the bench. 

“You offering them ponies?” he asks after a second, and Bruce resists the urge to roll his eyes. “College educations? No, wait, that’s already covered if a kid ages out while they’re still in care, so I’m going to go right back to ponies. Or maybe a pony for Amy and a car for Teddy, since the only person who’s helping him get his license is—”

“The home in Washington County is still on standby,” Jessica finally cuts him off, and Tony immediately snaps his mouth shut. She sighs as she turns her coffee mug around in her hands. “My agency’s helping the cops as much as they can,” she says after a few seconds. “We’re pulling all of the Pierponts’ records from when they signed up to become foster parents, trying to find whether there’s a blip on the radar that we missed. I’m really hoping that his story checks out, because nobody wants him that far away, least of all me.” She studies Bruce’s face for a moment, her eyes somehow calm and fearful at the same time, and Bruce tries to wash down his worry with a sip of tea. “There are better options out there.”

Bruce sets down his mug. “Like?” 

“Like a therapeutic foster home in Union County.” Tony releases a rough huff of breath, his head lolling back so he can stare at the ceiling, and Jessica shoves a strand of hair behind her ear before she leans forward. “We started the program years ago, and the waitlist’s always a mile long,” she explains, her arms stretching along the table. “They’re trained in dealing with kids who’ve been through traumatic experiences, who have behavioral issues or special advocacy needs— Basically, if a child needs a more intensive foster care experience, this is where we send them.”

“And you think Amy and Teddy need this?” There’s something rough and flinty in Tony’s voice as he crosses his arms over his chest, and his eyes darken as he glares at Jessica. “You think we can’t give them what they need here, in this house? When we’ve done fine so far, and that’s without knowing about Tristan Pierpont’s little ‘beat up on Amy’ game or about Teddy’s finely woven web of creative half-truths.” His voice shakes a little, and he snorts a bitter almost-laugh. “You know, for all your heart-as-pure-as-gold bullshit, you’ve left us to be the one picking up their pieces, and hearing that we’re not really good enough is kind of—” 

“That’s _not_ what I’m saying,” Jessica snaps. Tony rolls his lips together, his whole body tensing, and Jessica drags her fingers through her hair. “My boss put Amy on the waitlist after the fire, and she fast-tracked her after Teddy’s arrest. She never breathed a word about it to me, probably because she knew I’d fight her tooth and nail about it.” She flops back against the bench’s cushion and shakes her head. “When I came in this morning to tell her what Amy and Teddy said—to tell her that Teddy’s _not_ a murderer, just like I’ve maintained this whole time—she handed me the change of placement paperwork for Amy and suggested I talk to you guys about it.” 

Bruce draws in a long, uneven breath. “And Teddy?”

“There’s another kid who’ll be moving out in a week or two,” Jessica answers, the line of her shoulders softening. “We could place him there, too. After everything they’ve gone through with the Pierponts, the fire, the police, it— It’s not a bad idea.”

Tony snorts again, even sharper than before, and Bruce rubs a hand over his face. He thinks for a moment about all the happy times together, of Amy’s infectious laughter and Teddy’s quick sparks of wit—but then, he remembers other times, too. Night terrors, tantrums, long silences, they all rush up to choke Bruce, and that’s without considering the eight or nine weeks of half-truths and lies of omission.

“They’ve been through a lot,” someone says quietly, and Bruce stops pinching his nose to glance over at Tony. His face is solemn, his brow tense and jaw tight, and the longer Bruce watches him, the tighter he grips his coffee mug. “I get that. I mean, how could I _miss_ that, what with the dead mom and the distant dad and the fucked-up history that led to me practically blowing up my own heart with drugs, booze, and loose women.” Bruce rolls his eyes a little at that, but all he coaxes from Tony is a tiny, seconds-long smile. “They’ve been through hell,” he says again, his dark eyes seeking out and meeting Jessica’s, “and if you say to me with total certainty that the best place for the two of them is this therapeutic home with all the extra bells and whistles, then I will personally send them packing the second Teddy’s in the clear. But if that’s not a promise you can make me, then . . . ”

He shrugs slightly, his sentence fading out around them, and across the table, Jessica purses her lips. She twists her mug in her hands a few times, mapping out lazy circles against the tabletop. When she finally stops, it’s with a long, resigned sigh. “You know I can’t say that,” she finally replies, shaking her head. “You’ve been great for them. _Miles_ has been great for them. And all through the trauma and the pain, but—”

She drags her fingers through her hair, her shoulders slumping as she raises her eyes to glance between them, and Bruce feels his stomach twist. “You’ve been great for them, all three of you,” she says again, “but you’ve also been put through the wringer, you know? You’ve comforted nightmares and been lied to and dealt with a kid who ran away before being arrested for felony murder three times over. That’s not something most foster parents take lightly.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth kicks up into a grin. “You say that like we’re typical foster parents,” he retorts, and Jessica actually, _finally_ snorts a laugh.

They stand side-by-side on the doorstep as Jessica’s car pulls away a few minutes later, the two of them leeching each other’s heat in the cold of the early December night. Bruce shivers when Tony snakes cold fingers under his shirt, but he’s not really _surprised_ by it; if he returns the favor by pressing his cold nose against the thin shoulder of Tony’s t-shirt, well, that’s Tony’s problem.

“I don’t really want to think about it,” Tony says after a few seconds, and Bruce lifts his head just enough to study his face. He’s staring out at the circle drive, jaw tight and head held high, but Bruce can read his feelings in the tiny bob of his Adam’s apple and the way he worries the inside of his cheek. “I know that we told her we would, and I get that it’s maybe good for them and probably for _us_ , but at the end of the day and after the last nine weeks, I just . . . ”

He huffs out a breath that clouds the air, and Bruce watches it dissipate before he sighs gently. “We should at least wait to decide until we know the outcome of the investigation,” he says even as he’s tempted to nod eagerly and agree. Tony glances down at him, and he shrugs a little. “Until the dust settles and we talk to Miles, until—”

“Pigs fly and Coulson has at least a single iota of sex appeal?” Tony jokes, his eyes sparkling.

“Since one of those has already happened, you might not have long to wait,” Bruce responds, and he leans up to kiss his husband like he’s not already sure of his answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news: updates are weekly through the end of this story! No more horrible two-week cliffhangers. At least, not until we start the next long story . . .


	17. A Step You Can't Take Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce and Tony face not only the official end to the mystery of the Pierpont fire, but also an important decision about the future of their family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a brief mention of miscarriage. 
> 
> In most cases, a child is issued a new birth certificate after adoption with the new parents’ names on it. The old one often exists in a sealed record.
> 
> Due to logistical reasons, I’ve abandoned the actual calendar for a sort of wibbly-wobbly version. Please do not compare this chapter to the actual Gregorian calendar for December 2013. You will only want to shake me.
> 
> Here in the United States, it is still technically Thanksgiving. Therefore, I am very thankful for my wonderful beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, who are just a gift that keeps on giving.

“Wait,” Dot Barnes says Wednesday night, and her brow crinkles in concentration. “The mean man from another place thinks Teddy’s nice now just because Miss Jones and the lady with the funny hair called some people on the phone?”

Standing next to his daughter, Steve nearly chokes on his beer. “Uh, not exactly,” he replies, but somehow, he’s drowned out by the combination of Dot’s infinite faith in her newly declared best friend Amy and that same best friend’s very serious nod. 

“Uh-huh,” Amy says once she's finished with the nodding, and she only pauses when she’s forced to shove messy curls out of her eyes. “And now, we can be happy forever.”

Dot scowls and crosses her arms over her chest. “I wish somebody could do that at school every time my teacher thinks I started talking during quiet time when really Bailey started it.” She glances up at her father, her face suddenly hopeful. “Can Miss Jones call people about how much Bailey talks during quiet time?”

Steve’s eyes widen for a split-second before he thinks to say, “Absolutely not.” 

Dot harrumphs, her whole body slouching into a pout, and Bruce sips his drink to keep from laughing aloud.

Their house is filled with light and laughter, tonight, and Steve sighs at both girls before he shoos them back into the fray of attorneys, teenagers, social workers, and significant others. Bruce watches them disappear, Amy still in her school clothes and Dot in a sparkly Christmas party dress with a satin bow. 

“We wanted to save that,” Steve complains under his breath, and Bruce raises an eyebrow as he glances over. “She’s in the children’s choir at church, and they’re performing at the Christmas Eve service. We wanted her to keep it nice until then.”

Bruce feels the corner of his mouth kick up into a smile. “Dot had other ideas?”

“Dot always has other ideas,” Steve returns with a sly grin, and this time, Bruce allows himself to laugh.

He’d spent the morning and early afternoon filled with nervous energy, his body buzzing like a transformer as he’d waited for some news from Sif about her motion to dismiss the charges against Teddy. “It’s no guarantee,” she’d told them the night before, her long hair falling in her face as she’d leaned her elbows on the kitchen island. “Jones and Munroe talked to dozens of people—doctors, teachers, social workers, even the Pierpont’s pastor—but most of them never kept records of their contacts. Some refused to sign affidavits.” She’d shaken her head. “I’ve submitted everything I have to the court.”

“And?” Tony’d stopped drumming his fingertips against his coffee mug to glance over at Sif, his mouth pressed into a tight, uncertain line. Bruce’d studied his worry lines until they’d burned into his retinas; next to him, Teddy’d buried his hands in his jeans pockets. “You submitted the motion, probably e-mailed it to Peterson in a flash of passive-aggressive brilliance that kind of makes me want to kiss you on the mouth—” Sif’d wrinkled her nose at that, and Bruce’d shaken his head. “—but what comes next? How do we get from an unanswered motion in front of a judge who’s as firm as she is fair to, you know, a world without criminal charges pending against a kid in our house?”

Sif’d shrugged slightly. “We have faith,” she’d replied, and sipped her own coffee.

Bruce’d tried to cling to that faith, to curl his fingers around it like a talisman as he’d dropped Miles off at school and then as he’d muddled through a full morning of hearings, but the harder he’d held onto his hope, the more and more it’d crumbled. He’d refreshed the e-mail on his Blackberry a few dozen times that morning, missing snippets of testimony as he’d stared blankly at the _no new messages_ dialogue, and twice, he’d lost his train of thought in the middle of his own argument. Judge Smithe’d raised her eyebrows both times, her face curious but patient, and he’d mumbled apologies as he’d picked up the pieces. Retreating to his office after his courtroom embarrassments had only left him alone with his muddy thoughts and his rapidly crumbling hope.

At least, until Tony’d strode into his office at around two in the afternoon, spun his office chair around hard enough that Bruce’d felt his teeth rattle, and kissed Bruce so long and hard that it’d stolen the breath right out of his chest. 

“What—” he’d bleated, but the unexpected warmth of Teddy’s laughter’d interrupted him. When he’d swiveled away from Tony’s blinding grin, he’d discovered both the teen and Sif Rowan looming in his office doorway.

Sif’d crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought the point of lurking in the hallway was so that you could tell him the good news _before_ turning my stomach,” she’d groused.

Tony’d rolled his eyes. “Okay, first and foremost: if a kiss like that turns your stomach, you are destined to die alone.” Bruce’d glanced between them, his mind still reeling as Teddy—still-grinning, pink-faced, bright-eyed Teddy—beamed at everyone in the room. “And secondly, I don’t know the details about Special Prosecutor Ass-Pain deciding to join you on your motion and drop the charges, just that it _happened_ , and that’s good enough for—”

“The charges were dismissed?” Bruce’d asked, and everything from the last week—the desperate fear, the sleepless nights, the gnawing nervousness, the impossible hope—had rushed up to meet him as Tony’d grinned. He’d scrubbed a hand over his face, but not before his heart’d leapt into his throat and his pulse’d started hammering in his ears. “I don’t understand,” he’d said, and he’d been surprised by Sif’s bright, easy smile. “You thought it might not be enough to sustain the dismissal without a hearing. You thought Peterson’d balk, that he’d—”

“Try to force our hand, yes,” Sif’d replied, her ponytail bobbing as she’d nodded. “He called me this morning. Apparently, he’d rather join in the motion than fight against it. ‘For the sake of everyone involved in the case,’ I believe were his exact words.” She’d shrugged slightly. “Judge Smithe will sign an order at the end of the day today.”

Bruce’d swallowed thickly. “And then?”

“And then it’s over,” Teddy’d replied, wet-eyed, and Bruce’d surged to his feet to hug him.

He hardly remembers the five hours between that moment and this one, hours filled with hugs and kisses, elated seven-year-olds and quietly tearful sons, warm handshakes and—

“You do know that ‘arranging your catering’ is no longer part of my job description, right?” Pepper’d asked as she’d walked into their house just after the end of her work day. A string of white-clad strangers with a local restaurant’s name embroidered on their shirts’d followed behind her armed with chafing dishes and foil-covered trays. When Bruce’d blinked at her, she’d planted her hands on her hips and glared at his husband. “I’m not your paralegal anymore.”

“No, just my guardian angel and saving grace, which I think helps round out your resume quite nicely,” Tony’d said as he’d strode into the living room. He’d kissed Pepper on the cheek as she’d rolled her eyes. “And before I get the full ‘pulled one over on the husband’ lecture for throwing a party on a school night,” he’d continued as he’d glanced over in Bruce’s direction, “the kid who is not ours except for the part where he lives in our house and eats our food is no longer facing murder charges. The least we can do is fill up our house with booze and friends to celebrate the occasion.”

Bruce’d sighed. “Tony—”

“Least we can do, big guy,” Tony’d repeated, and he’d drawn out the last of Bruce’s nervous energy just by running his hands down Bruce’s sides and smiling.

Everyone’s well-fed now, laughing in clumps all over the living room and dining room, and as he finishes the last of his wine, Bruce can’t help but soak in the warmth that thrums around him. In the living room, Teddy and his friends entertain Miles, Ganke, Darcy, Jane, and Pepper; nearby, Thor balances Astrid on his hip while sharing a rowdy story that leaves Jasper, Rhodey, Jessica Jones, Natasha, and Maria wheezing with laughter. Over in the kitchen, Phil and Sif engage in a deep discussion about _something_ while Clint watches Tony and Bucky try to steer Amy and Dot away from the tray of brownies. The whole scene feels natural, like the natural end to another chapter of Bruce’s life, and he only realizes that Steve’s talking to him when the other man touches his elbow.

Steve’s little grin is as mischievous as Dot’s when he asks, “Reliving Tony’s speech about the justice system at work?” 

Bruce snorts. “I’m actually trying to forget it.”

Steve laughs. “Careful, he might quiz you about it before bed tonight.”

“Your faith in my ability to distract my magpie of a husband is staggering,” Bruce deadpans, and he grins when Steve almost spits beer. 

He’s about to ask what Steve’d said just a moment earlier when, suddenly, there’s a cry of “Daddy!” and Amy and Dot materialize in front of them. Amy collides with Bruce’s side hard enough that Bruce nearly sloshes wine down the front of his shirt. When he levels her a warning glance, she responds with a brilliant, thousand-watt smile.

Dot, on the other hand, plants her hands on her hips and peers up at her father. “Daddy,” she says, and her tone is deadly serious.

Steve rolls his lips together to keep from smiling. “Dorothea?”

“Uncle Tony says that if you and Uncle Bruce say okay, I can have a sleepover with Amy on Friday.” She squares her shoulders as though preparing for battle, and Bruce hides his own grin behind his glass. “We want to have a sleepover.”

Steve chuckles. “Is that so?” 

“Uncle Bucky said the same thing,” Amy reports, her fingers curling in Bruce’s shirt. Her chin’s almost resting on his hip, her brown eyes wide and pleading, and he can’t help but brush her hair back out of her face. “You and Uncle Steve just need to say yes.”

“Uncle Steve isn’t sure how he always ends up the bad guy in this situation,” Steve half-complains, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen. When Bruce follows his gaze, he discovers their husbands standing together with matching, fake-innocent grins. Tony wiggles his fingers in a tiny wave, and Bucky covers his mouth to keep from snickering.

Bruce rolls his eyes. “We picked the wrong husbands,” he mutters, and Steve grins.

“ _Daddy_ ,” Dot repeats, stamping her foot. Steve raises an eyebrow at that, and she immediately deflates and drops her gaze down at the floor. “We really, _really_ want a sleepover,” she mumbles, her toes curling in her socks.

Steve’s whole face softens, and for a moment, Bruce expects him to reach out and pull her in for a comforting hug. “As long as Uncle Bruce agrees,” he finally answers.

Both girls immediately snap their heads in Bruce’s direction, their faces so filled with hope that it surges through his chest. He raises his hands in defeat. “I’m not sure I could say no if I wanted to.”

Dot beams and seizes immediately seizes Steve around the legs, and Bruce laughs as he watches his friend try to hold onto his beer _and_ lean down to grip his daughter in a hug. He’s so distracted, in fact, that he only really remembers that Amy’s clinging around his waist when she announces, “You’re the best daddy ever!”

And that’s when Bruce’s heart freezes in his chest.

He tries to breathe around the momentary shock, but the longer Amy holds onto him, the more he feels like someone’s knocked the wind right out of him. Amy only lingers for a few seconds before Dot drags her away, crowing about her victory to all who’ll listen, and Bruce’s heart lodges in his throat as he watches the girls prance away. He mumbles some half-hearted excuse about the dogs before he ducks away from Steve. Not that his excuses necessarily matter; even standing out on the deck, he feels the other man’s questioning eyes following him, weighing him down.

There’s something both brisk and refreshing about the bitter cold of a December night, and Bruce shoves his hands deep into his pockets as the dogs caper around him. He kicks Dummy’s favorite tennis ball off the edge of the deck, snorting a laugh when Butterfingers trips down the steps on his way to chase after it. They end up racing around the perimeter of the yard, their barks echoing into the darkness, but Bruce’s too busy fighting against his unsettled nerves to even roll his eyes at them.

He leans against the deck railing, the cold settling into his bones as his mind replays the word _daddy_ like a skipping record. He knows Amy just misspoke—blurted the word blindly, probably mimicking something she’d heard from Dot. There’s a therapeutic foster home waiting for Amy and Teddy both, and no matter what lurks in Bruce’s heart, he knows that he’ll never actually have the chance to be their—

“Overwhelmed by your husband’s hospitality?” someone asks, voice dripping with amusement, and Bruce twists around to find Natasha and Clint standing behind him, shoulder-to-shoulder against the cold. Clint’s wearing his worn, faded pea-coat, the buttons open to show off his thick gray scarf, while Natasha—

The corner of Bruce’s mouth kicks up into a tiny grin. “You stole Steve’s cardigan?” he asks.

She shrugs, the thick navy sweater slipping from one of her slender shoulders. She hikes it back up before answering, “It looked cold out here.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Said the Russian,” he mutters, and Natasha snorts at him as she winds herself up in Steve’s sweater. “You know she’s just trying to fill up her ‘office clothing thief’ bingo card.”

Bruce frowns slightly, his brow bunching. “There’s a bingo card?”

“No, it’s a whole bingo contest,” Clint returns. “Winner-take-all, or something.”

“Between who?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Natasha replies, and there’s something about her tiny, enigmatic smile that makes Bruce laugh. 

Dummy and Butterfingers scramble up on the deck just then to greet the new visitors with frantic tail-wagging and one disgustingly damp tennis ball. For a few moments, Bruce stands and watches as Clint throws the ball for Dummy and Natasha scratches Butterfingers behind the ears. In the cold and quiet, he’s able to forget—at least, a little—about anything but _this_ , the warm reality of the life he stumbled upon a year ago.

A life without beaming little girls calling him daddy, or a quiet, thoughtful teenager he’s spent the last several weeks trying to save.

Finally, Clint props his hip against the deck railing. “So, what really happened with Teddy’s case, anyway?”

Bruce frowns as he glances over. “Tony didn’t tell you when he invited you over?”

“The most we got from Tony was the dinner invitation and the speech about the wheels of justice turning toward the righteous,” Natasha replies from her spot in one of the deck chairs. “I’m still not sure what he meant.”

“I’m not sure he knew what he meant,” Bruce assures her, and the corner of her mouth kicks up into a little smile. Butterfingers nuzzles her knee until she starts to stroke his head, her fingernails bright red against his motley gray-brown fur. Bruce watches for a moment before he shakes his head. “Tristan started the fire,” he says quietly, and Natasha’s fingers still. “The fire marshal will be updating his findings tomorrow or Friday and closing the case. The Pierponts, they— It turns out they weren’t all they claimed to be.”

Clint purses his lips. “They go for the Aaron Davis neglect special with their kid, or—”

“They trended more toward presenting well to the outside world while rotting from the inside, but yes,” Bruce replies. He releases a little huff of breath before he glances up at the dark, cloudy night sky. “About six months before they got Amy,” he continues after a moment, “Tristan started acting up at school. The school counselors thought he had socialization issues and trouble relating to other children. They suggested his parents put him in therapy groups and weekly counseling.” He shrugs slightly. “They decided to become foster parents instead.”

“They didn’t go through a vetting process?” Natasha asks carefully.

“The agency did their due diligence,” Bruce immediately explains, “but the Pierponts successfully hid the worst of Tristan’s issues. They enrolled him in a new school before they started the home study, didn’t report some of the incidents between him and other children during their interviews . . . ” He drags a hand through his already messy hair before he glances back over at his friends. “His school counselor, the one who first suggested they enroll him in therapy, she thinks they meant well. She’d even suggested introducing Tristan to more children around his own age and younger to help build empathy and healthy relationships. I don’t think anyone expected that it’d accelerate to fire-setting and abuse.”

Clint snorts. “Lot of good that did,” he mutters darkly. Natasha immediately snaps her head up to scowl at him, and he rolls his eyes. “What? I’m not gonna pretend like they didn’t fuck this up, Nat. The kid ruined his family’s life. Almost ruined Teddy and Amy’s too, and they’re _good_ kids.” He shakes his head as he pulls his coat closer. “Best thing for Barney and me would’ve been to throw us in therapy when we were that age, too. Get us the help we needed so we didn’t turn out like little shits. Not that we had the money for it. So when you hear about these kinds of assholes, the ones with the means to help their kid, I just . . . ”

He trails off, then, his voice flinty and distant as he crouches down to grab Dummy’s tennis ball. He flings it deep enough into the back yard that it hits the back fence, and the dogs almost knock each other off the deck in their race to recover it.

Bruce rolls his lips together for a moment before he says, “Not all parents know how to help their children.”

“There’s a difference between not knowing how and not wanting to try,” Clint retorts before brushing his hands off on his jeans and trailing the dogs out into the yard.

“Barney violated the terms of his probation last weekend,” Natasha says quietly, and Bruce glances over to find her standing next to him, her elbows resting on the deck railing. “He’s pretending he’s not upset about it.”

Bruce smiles softly. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting your brother to be a better person,” he reminds her.

“And there’s nothing wrong with wanting Teddy and Amy to be part of your family.” When Bruce jerks a little at the absolute certainty in her voice, she flashes him one of her tiny, knowing smiles. “I heard Amy’s little proclamation of love. I figured that might’ve been what chased you outside.”

He snorts. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“Not really.” Bruce shakes his head at that, his gaze drifting back into the yard, and Natasha lightly bumps their shoulders together. “Over the past two months, you’ve lived in purgatory,” she says softly. “All your time and energy’s gone toward worrying about the fire or all the people involved in it: Teddy, Amy, the Pierponts, even Tony and Miles. You haven’t been their foster parents as much as their handler. Without the worry hanging over your head, you can—”

“I’m still worried about Miles,” he murmurs, and at his side, Natasha falls deathly silent. He listens to the tinkle of the dogs’ tags in the darkness before he glances over at her. “Even without the fire, Miles— He’s still figuring out how to be our son, how to fit in with two white-collar white guys who know nothing about being thirteen, black, and scared. And all that time, when we should’ve been parenting him, we were dealing with the fire.” He sighs and stares down at his hands. “We were letting him down.”

“Does he feel that way?” Natasha asks.

“He’s thirteen, of course he—”

“Bruce.” There’s something sharp in her tone, almost unforgiving, and Bruce swallows around the rest of his sentence. “Have you asked Miles how he feels about Teddy and Amy?”

He shakes his head slightly. “No.”

“Don’t tell her I’m repeating her advice, Katie-Kate’s always reminding me to stop being an ass and use my words,” Clint suddenly says, and Bruce lifts his head to find the other man hopping up the two steps onto the deck, the dogs at his heels. “Apparently, you can’t find out what somebody’s problem is until you _ask_ them. At least, according to—”

“Katie-Kate?” Natasha repeats, eyebrows raised.

“Shut up,” Clint grumbles, and he elbows her before flopping against the deck railing and crossing his arms over chest. “Your kid figures into your decisions the same way your husband does, as much as it still freaks me out sometimes that you voluntarily married Stark,” he continues, grinning when Bruce rolls his eyes, “but as far as I can tell, the best place for these kids is with a family that loves them and wants them to stick around long term. One that’s already weathered them through pretty much the worst storm of their lives.” Clint’s eyes are so sharp, so piercing, that Bruce ducks his head back down to his hands. “If that’s not something you’re up to, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re using Miles as an excuse for not giving in to what you want—never mind what Tony _obviously_ wants—then you’re kind of the asshole Kate Bishop warns people about.”

Bruce snorts. “You’re taking significant personal advice from a sixteen-year-old on a diversion for assault and battery?” he asks.

Clint shrugs. “Seventeen next week,” he corrects, and Natasha scoffs before she rolls her eyes.

Bruce almost smiles at that, shaking his head slightly as he tips his face back up to the sky. He thinks of last December, of stargazing with the boy who’d already crept into his heart and staked a claim, of his last few nights of sleeping alone. The cold creeps under his sweater suddenly, and he shivers against it—and worse, against the strange, bittersweet loneliness that curls in the pit of his stomach.

He forgets, sometimes, that he’d lived almost forty years before he’d fallen in love with either Tony or Miles.

Worse, he’s not sure how he survived so long without them.

“What do you want?” Natasha asks just then, and Bruce drops his eyes away from the sky to find her studying his face with her usual careful attention. His heart and gut both twist into knots, and his mouth instantly tastes like ash. Standing at her side, Clint raises his eyebrows, his expression patient—but expectant. “Under everything else, what do you _really_ want?”

Bruce presses his lips into a thin, tight line before he answers, “My family. As it exists tonight, messy as it is—that’s what I want.”

Natasha reaches over and squeezes his arm. “Then you know what comes next,” she tells him, and he carries the warmth of her smile with him even after she’s walked back inside the house.

 

==

 

Late that night, after everyone's left and the house is cold and quiet, Bruce wakes up in an otherwise empty bed. 

He’s disoriented for a moment, his arm stretching across Tony’s half of the mattress and finding only the lingering warmth of his husband’s body, and when he finally swings his legs out from under the covers, there’s no dog waiting to snuffle his feet with an icy nose. He rubs his face before he glances at the alarm clock.

The bright blue numbers inform him that it’s just after one in the morning.

He grabs Tony’s old MIT sweatshirt off the floor and shrugs it on as he steps out into the hallway. Everything’s pitch black and perfectly silent, but it’s peaceful that way. Comfortable, almost, and Bruce breathes it in before he slowly nudges Miles’s bedroom door open. His son sleeps stretched across the center of the bed, a comic book abandoned near his left hand and his cell phone resting in the middle of his extra pillow, and Bruce smiles at him for a moment before he closes the door behind him. In the next room, Amy’s curled in a ball with Jarvis tucked into the crook at the back of her knees. He raises his head, blinks in the glow of the butterfly nightlight, and lashes his tail once before he curls back up. Amy sighs in her sleep, her curls falling lightly over her cheeks, and Bruce resists the urge to tuck her in more tightly before he pulls her door halfway shut.

He slips down the stairs unnoticed, his footfalls soft and steady in the late-night silence. The main floor of the house is as quiet and dark as upstairs, their living room furniture appearing as hulking shadows against the dim ambient light from outside. Bruce isn’t surprised, exactly, to find Tony standing in front of the back door, and for a moment he just studies the line of his shoulders in the darkness. He’s still and soft, a far cry from the Tony Stark that the rest of the world experiences every day, and the sudden need to reach out and touch him crashes over Bruce like a tidal wave.

But instead of fighting against the desire, he rides it forward.

Tony sighs a little when Bruce presses himself along his back in the dark, and his hands reach out to help draw Bruce’s arms around his waist. He smells like spice and sweat when Bruce presses his nose to the back of his neck, and for a moment, they linger there, their bodies tangled just enough that they appear as one reflection in the sliding glass door. Tony laces their fingers together and sways slightly, and Bruce travels with him, leeching and sharing heat all at once.

“You okay?” Bruce asks after a moment, his voice a whisper against Tony’s skin. Tony stills like a spooked rabbit, his fingers flexing against Bruce’s, and Bruce lifts his head to glance over his shoulder. “What’s—”

“Jessica needs an answer on the therapeutic foster home,” Tony says instantly, and Bruce swallows as something cold and hard drops into his stomach. His husband shakes his head jerkily, and his breath escapes in a huff. “After you came back in from talking to Red and Barton, when Jane thrust the Thor-ling at you and demanded you cuddle her— Jess cornered me. Said that her boss is breathing down her neck, and we need to figure our shit out or . . . ”

He trails off then, his dark eyes darting away from Bruce’s hazy reflection to stare out at the yard, and Bruce spends the next second pretending that he can’t feel the thrum of Tony’s worry buzzing through both of them. It’s an electric current, a hum that resonates in the pit of Bruce’s stomach and the back of his teeth, and he purposely presses a little closer to Tony’s back. Tony relaxes some, his thumb stroking over Bruce’s as he gazes out into the dark.

“I thought this’d be easy,” he says after a moment, and Bruce rolls his lips together as he rests his chin against Tony’s shoulder. “Miles, he— I’m not saying the course of true love ran smooth there or anything, but everything went so quick and painless with that one, I just assumed this’d be the same. I figured, they’d need us, we’d need them, and at the end of the day . . . ” His voice catches a little, and he snorts at himself as he tosses a glance over his shoulder. “And instead of traveling the Foster Parent Express straight to, I don’t know, Permanency Junction, we’ve dealt with fires and criminal charges and three kids—our own included—shaking apart at the seams, and I just can’t figure out whether it’s better to keep them here, keep _fighting_ through all of this, or whether we should make like Elsa and let it go.”

He flaps a hand, and Bruce can’t help his little chuckle. “I’m not sure this is the right time for a _Frozen_ reference,” he points out.

“Our niece would argue that there is never a wrong time for a _Frozen_ reference,” Tony retorts, and his little grin glows like a beacon in the dark.

Bruce snorts a laugh, and he loses the next few seconds admiring the warmth in Tony’s face and the familiar crinkle of his crow’s feet. He wants to draw Tony back upstairs and into their bed, to press his lips against Tony’s temple and soak up his heat, to soothe away the nervousness that Bruce himself still feels. He wants to slide the ancient bathrobe from Tony’s shoulders, to strip him physically and emotionally bare, to figure out the answers for the questions he’s still asking himself. He wants—

He wants a version of the world where there really is a straight line between two points, a road without potholes or bumps along the way.

But he also knows how hard it can be to appreciate the sun when you’ve never survived the rain.

“Do you want to send them to the therapeutic foster home?” he asks after a long while, and Tony’s thumb stills against his. “It’s not a loaded question, but I need to know—”

“Do we really have a choice?” Tony returns. He steps out of Bruce’s grip, and Bruce pretends not to notice the slight tremble of his hand as he drags it through his dark, messy hair. “The only reason we’ve avoided night terrors for the last week is because Amy’s so exhausted, she’s falling asleep on the couch. Teddy—” He gestures loosely toward the hallway off the kitchen, the one that leads to Teddy’s bedroom. “—just dodged murder charges. _Triple_ murder charges. If that doesn’t deserve life in a specially tailored foster home, I don’t know what does. And you factor in our kid, with his shitty grades and his identity crisis and the fact that I’m _still_ not sure we’re actually helping him out of this fog, and I—”

He leaves the last word hanging between them and huffs out a shaky breath. On the couch, Dummy whines and shifts to rest his chin on the armrest. Tony snorts a little at his baleful stare and reaches over to stroke his nose.

Bruce presses his lips together. “That’s not what I asked.”

Tony frowns. “You asked about the therapeutic foster home, and I—” 

“I asked if you _wanted_ to send them to the foster home. Not whether you thought they needed it.” Tony glances away, focusing on Dummy and his barely wagging tail, and Bruce sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know whether you’re right about them needing more therapy and care than we can give them,” he admits after a moment. “Most days, I don’t know whether _Miles_ needs more therapy and care than we can give him. I think sometimes we’re doing him a disservice just by having our names on his birth certificate.” Tony snorts at that, and for some reason, Bruce smiles at his tiny eye-roll. “I don’t know what any of us needs,” he says again, “but I think it’s fair to ask what we all _want_.”

Tony raises his eyebrows. “You know, if you start asking the pets, I’m gonna probably need to sign _you_ up for a therapeutic—”

Bruce sighs. “Tony.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth kicks into a tiny smile, but then he’s ducking away again. He drops his hands into the pockets of his robe and, after a few seconds, shakes his head. “I came down here because I thought I’d find all the answers. Pluck them out of thin air, line them up, figure out how to keep all of us together and sane despite the fact that the last two months’ve been nothing but hellfire and _Dateline_ -style unsolved mysteries. I mean, it worked back when I was deciding to propose, so why wouldn’t it work this time?” Something deep in the root of Bruce’s stomach bunches at that, almost choking him, but Tony just sighs. “I’m supposed to be the backbone of this whole operation,” he says after another beat, “and instead, I’m standing here with twenty thousand questions, no answers, and a heart that wants to keep and protect these two kids in spite of everything that tells me they might be better off without us.” He raises his head, his expression so open that Bruce’s whole chest aches. “Some backbone I turned out to be.”

“You don’t have to be the backbone,” Bruce says immediately. Tony’s lips part, clearly ready to argue, but Bruce reaches out and grabs his arm. He squeezes it gently, the silky fabric of Tony’s robe bunching between his fingers, and Tony pauses for a moment before he rolls his lips together. “It’s not your job to pick up all our broken pieces and try to assemble them back into a whole while the rest of us watch. It’s not your job to bury everything inside instead of letting us bear the weight, too.”

He slides his hand from Tony’s arm and onto his chest, his fingers spreading across the thin fabric of his t-shirt. His thumb brushes along the contour of his scar, tracing it, and Tony smiles slightly as he reaches down and trails his fingertips along Bruce’s arm. It’s red-hot, like a brand, and Bruce’s stomach twists as Tony reaches the inside of his elbow and strokes back up to his wrist.

“Is there a bone in the body that bears some of the weight while passing the rest of it off to the others, Doctor Banner?” he asks after a moment, his voice a whisper in the dark.

Bruce almost rolls his eyes. “I’m not that kind of a doctor.”

“Says the man whose examinations are always thorough and—”

Bruce shoots him a warning glance, but the false innocence that immediately flashes across Tony’s face leaves him chuckling. For a few seconds, he studies the contours of Tony’s face in the dim light, memorizing and re-memorizing every fine line and minor imperfection, every hint of gray in his dark hair. Tony smiles softly, his hand settling on Bruce’s wrist, and they spend a long time soaking in the comfortable silence that’s settled around them.

Finally, Bruce says, “You’re the keystone.”

“The what?” Tony asks.

“In an arch,” Bruce replies, and he barely resists his urge to smooth the wrinkles from Tony’s brow when he frowns in confusion. “The two halves of an arch can stand on their own, but they can’t support weight until there’s a stone—the keystone—in the apex. Then, all the stones bear the weight together.”

There’s a beat of silence before Tony snorts a little laugh and shakes his head. “You just came up with that, didn’t you?”

Bruce shrugs. “I’d rather our family be a load-bearing arch than a series of vertebrae and other assorted bones,” he admits.

Tony’s big, bright laughter—laughter that fills the living room and stretches beyond, laughter that sparks heat in the bottom of Bruce’s stomach and radiates outward—feels like the greatest gift Bruce’s ever received. “God, I love you,” Tony breathes and the next thing Bruce knows, he’s being reeled in for a kiss.

An hour later, when they’re naked and sweat-slick under their comforter, Tony rolls onto his side and threads his fingers through Bruce’s hair. “No,” he says, his skin glowing white in the light from their bedside lamp.

Bruce frowns slightly. “No what?”

“No, I don’t want to send Amy and Teddy to another foster home,” Tony answers, and the certainty in his voice steals more of Bruce’s breath than his kisses ever could. He smoothes his thumb over Bruce’s hairline. “I don’t want to be just one blip on their chain of custody. They deserve better than that.”

Bruce sighs, and for the first time since he woke up alone, all the tension in his body seeps out of him, leaving him soft and relieved and _warm_. “Okay,” he says, and when Tony bends down to kiss him on the forehead, no power in the universe can stop his smile. 

 

==

 

“You are _so_ bad at this!” Miles half-shouts, and Teddy laughs so hard that he nearly snorts his Mountain Dew.

Within seconds, there’s a massive explosion on the television screen, and both the top and bottom halves splash red as the characters on the display crumple to the ground in agonized unison. The shouting on Teddy’s headset is loud enough that Bruce can hear it from where he’s sitting in the armchair, and he hides his smile as he flips a page in his book.

Miles groans and slides off the couch. “I don’t want you to be on my team anymore,” he complains.

Teddy wrinkles his nose. “We won last round.”

“Only because Eli’s better than you and Ganke combined,” Miles retorts, and Ganke’s shout of annoyance defies Miles’s noise-cancelling headphones and carries into the living room.

It’s the first night in a long time—really, since Teddy and Amy’s arrival—that the television screen’s filled with blood, guts, and gore while the coffee table’s littered with all manner of teenage snacks and sodas. Both boys had helped Amy pack for her sleepover a few hours earlier, debating the various merits of her two favorite pajama sets while constantly eyeing the clock. 

“You keep checking the time on your cell phone and it _will_ stick on the home screen forever,” Tony’d warned at one point, and Miles’d rolled his eyes so hard that not even a fake cough could successfully hide Teddy’s snickering. Miles’d shoved him lightly, and standing in the stairwell, Tony’d grinned.

He’d also ordered the two boys three large pizzas before disappearing out the door for mysterious errands. “I promise not to spend my entire retirement nest egg on something ridiculous,” he’d said as he’d bundled up in his scarf and coat. 

Bruce’d raised his eyebrows. “You mean besides what you just spent on pizza?”

“And on the massive pile of gaming night snacks Teddy’s hiding in his bedroom until after I leave,” Tony’d replied, and he’d blown Bruce a kiss before ducking out the door.

Most of Teddy’s snack stash is now proudly displayed in front of the two boys, and Bruce watches out of the corner of his eye as Miles grabs yet another handful of Cheetos. “No, not the stupid abandoned warehouse,” he complains into his headset, and Teddy grins as he reaches for his soda. “Last time we did it, I— No, Eli, it won’t be fun. I’ll totally die of brother-cide.”

“Fratricide,” Teddy corrects.

“Yeah, see what I have to live with?” Miles demands, and he grins as Teddy elbows him.

Bruce expects for a moment that his heart or stomach will clench, that _something_ will seize up at Miles’s comment about “brother-cide” and the friendly elbow war on the couch, but instead, he just feels warm. He settles back in the chair and watches as the menu screen transitions to some sort of war-torn town, and he only returns to his book after the boys start arguing with their teammates over the headsets. At some point, Jarvis joins him, curling in his lap as he finishes a chapter; another chapter and a half later, the teens unfold from the couch for what Bruce assumes is a much-needed bathroom break.

“You need another soda?” Teddy hollers as Miles races up the stairs to the bathroom.

“No, I’m good!” he shouts down, and Bruce laughs as he flips another page in his book.

“What about you?” When Bruce glances up, he discovers that Teddy’s lingering next to the armchair, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. There’s a hint of chocolate from one of his many peanut butter cups smeared on the corner of his mouth, and his fingertips are dyed red from his flaming-hot Cheetos, but his smile’s warm and easy. “You want tea or something?”

“I’d actually really like that,” Bruce admits as he starts to close his book, “but I can—”

“You’re putting up with all our, like, screaming and arguing,” Teddy cuts in with a shrug. “The least I can do is get you a cup of tea.”

“You sure?” 

Teddy screws up his face in an expression of mock thoughtfulness. “Well, I mean, tea _is_ a lot to handle, what with the hot water _and_ the tea bag, but—”

Bruce laughs. “Go,” he commands, and Teddy grins at him before he trots off into the kitchen. 

It’s another two hours and two cups of tea later that Miles reaches critical mass with his frustration and rage-quits the abandoned warehouse map. Teddy cracks up at his petulant sulking, and Bruce barely manages to slide his coffee mug out of harm’s way before Miles flings a throw pillow at his foster brother. Their couch war progresses until Miles showers peanut butter cup wrappers over Teddy’s head and Teddy, jerking away, knocks a bowl of Doritos onto the floor.

The dogs both dive for it, and Bruce sighs. “I think we’re at the point where—”

“Yeah, Dad, we’ll clean up,” Miles says with a disinterested wave of his hand—but before Bruce can warn him about his tone, he’s on his knees and starting to pluck all the foil bits up out of the carpet.

Teddy waits until the living room’s restored to order before he retreats into his room for his nightly phone call with Billy, but Miles lingers behind, flopping on the couch and channel surfing as Bruce continues reading his book. After a few minutes, though, he starts fidgeting and sighing, his feet propped up on one of the arms of the couch as he half-heartedly rotates between three different superhero movies on basic cable. 

Batman’s monologuing about his dead parents when Miles finally shifts around enough to glance in Bruce’s direction. “Bruce?”

“Hmm?”

“Are we keeping Amy and Teddy?”

Bruce jerks his head up from his book hard enough that his teeth rattle, and he only really recognizes that there’s shock registering on his face when Miles rolls his eyes. “Never mind,” he mumbles, and turns back toward the television.

“I’m not—” Bruce starts to say, but there’s something about Miles’s expression and his aggressively teenaged slouch that causes the words to dry up in the back of his throat. He shuts his book and shoos the cat off his lap before he stands, and even then, he lingers next to the chair for a moment, uncertain.

When he walks over to the television and switches it off, Miles glares at him. “I was watching that,” he complains. He presses the power button the remote, but Bruce mimics Tony’s favorite child-cornering tactic and blocks the sensor by standing in front of the screen. Finally, Miles tosses the remote on the coffee table. “Whatever,” he grumbles, and twists to stare at the ceiling. 

Bruce allows him a few extra seconds of silence before he moves away from the television and sits back down in the chair. “Why did you ask if we’re keeping your foster siblings?” he asks. Miles rolls his lips together, his eyes still trained on the ceiling, and Bruce draws in a long breath. “Miles, if you want to talk about it, we can—”

“Jessica said something to Tony about there being another foster home,” Miles blurts, and Bruce sighs as he drags his fingers through his own hair. “They didn’t notice that I was, like, right there until after they finished talking. I think Dad just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention.”

Bruce almost smiles. “Tony forgets that not everyone’s as distractible as he is.”

Miles snorts at him, his face glinting with a half-second grin. “You mean he forgets that not everyone falls for his ‘I’m totally distracted right now’ act,” he returns, and his grin grows when Bruce laughs.

But Miles’s grin is gone by the time the laughter fades away, and Bruce spends a few seconds watching his son scowl at the ceiling, his expression somehow both thoughtful and frustrated all at once. “I thought last fall’d be the weirdest fall of my life,” he finally admits, “but I think this one might win.”

Bruce purses his lips. “I know we’ve all had a hard time since Teddy and Amy moved in,” he says after a moment. “If Tony and I would’ve known, we wouldn’t have—”

“No, Dad, that’s not—” Miles breaks in, but he cuts off the end of his own sentence with an annoyed groan. He scrubs his palms over his face and heaves a breath so hard that his entire body deflates. When he finally glances over, the thin thread of hurt caught in his face and eyes ties a knot around the softest part of Bruce’s belly.

“My mom almost had another baby,” he says, his voice quiet and careful, and Bruce’s heart drops into his stomach. “I was in second grade, and it was _such_ a big deal. I guess my mom and dad’d wanted to have another one, and they were so excited that I really got into it. Time to be a big brother, you know? And one day—” His voice sticks a little, and he shakes his head. “Turns out, there are lots of ways that something can go wrong before the baby’s born,” he finishes after a few seconds. “I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.”

Bruce swallows as he leans forward, elbows on his legs. “Miles—”

“It’s dumb,” Miles continues, his eyes drafting back up toward the ceiling. “Amy’s not the sister I never had or anything. Really, my brother or sister would be more like Dot’s age than Amy's, and who knows if you and Tony would’ve adopted me if I’d come with an extra mystery sibling.” He shrugs slightly. “I just— I think about that baby my mom never had a lot, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bruce admits softly. Miles immediately shifts around to look at him again, and despite his best efforts, the only expression he can offer his son is a tiny, slightly crooked smile. “I spent six years with my parents and then six years in a group home,” he reminds him gently. “I still sometimes wonder if my life would’ve been different if I’d had more family—siblings included.”

Miles’s mouth kicks up into a grin. “You have Jen.”

Bruce snorts. “Jennifer Walters exists only to pull my pigtails and malign my taste in men,” he replies, and he smiles when Miles laughs. “Jen’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sister,” he adds after his son’s done snickering, “but there’s still some distance between us, sometimes, because we didn’t start out together.”

“There’s distance between siblings whether they start out together or not,” Miles points out. His dismissive hand-wave reminds Bruce of Tony, and he tries very hard not to grin. “My dad could hardly be in the same room as Uncle Aaron, Bucky told us all about his weird brother at the Labor Day party, Billy’s little brothers break into his e-mail and read all his kissy-face messages from Teddy.”

Bruce frowns slightly. “Kissy-face?” he repeats.

Miles raises his hands. “That’s how Teddy described it, and I don’t want to know what he really meant,” he quickly says, and Bruce chuckles as he shakes his head. “And besides,” Miles adds after a couple seconds, “for all the blood siblings you don’t have, you have all these other people who love you and Dad. Clint and Natasha, Pepper, the uncles—”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “They’re the uncles now?” he asks carefully.

Miles grins. “Dot learned in school that your uncles’ kids are your cousins,” he explains, “and since you’re her uncles . . . ” 

Bruce sighs and resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You’re her cousin and her parents are your uncles,” he finishes.

“And Amy’s her fairy godsister best friend cousin—or something like that, anyway.”

He laughs a little at Miles’s matter-of-fact delivery—like fairy godsister best friend cousins are commonplace in the wild world of elementary school politics—and again at the way Miles immediately grins at him. He swings his legs back down onto the floor to sit up properly, and after the socially acceptable time for teenage hesitation, jerks his head in the direction of the empty couch cushion beside him. Bruce only barely swallows his chuckle before he scoots over, and within a few seconds, Miles is leaning against him, their arms pressing together and his son’s head almost on his shoulder.

“If you would’ve asked me three months ago if I wanted a brother or a sister, I would’ve said no,” Miles says after a few seconds, and Bruce tilts his head to glance down at him. “Everything felt so messy—with Bree, with my teachers, even with you guys sometimes—that I kind of just wanted to be left alone. You know? Close the door, lock everybody out, forget that there’re other people in the world.” He shakes his head. “But then Amy and Teddy lost everything in that fire, and it— I don’t know, it made things harder and easier at the same time, somehow.”

Bruce rolls his lips together and swallows around the sudden thick feeling in the back of his throat. “You know there’s no guarantee that they’d stay with us forever, right?” he asks carefully. “Amy’s mother could still put her life back together enough to take Amy back into her custody, and if Teddy’s adopted, he loses—”

“Special money from when his dad died, I know,” Miles finishes, and Bruce nods slightly. “I know that it’s not like you and Dad’d just adopt them tomorrow and we’d all live happily ever after.” Miles glances up at him and shrugs. “I just think they deserve a chance to live with us while things are _good_ for once.”

His tone is so earnest and certain that Bruce can’t help but smile at him. “Have you always been this smart, or did this sneak up on me?” he teases.

Miles’s whole face lights up in a grin. “I think it’s probably Dad’s influence,” he retorts, and he laughs so hard at Bruce’s offended _stare_ that he falls right off the couch.

 

==

 

“I think I want to move foster homes, if that’s okay,” Teddy says late Sunday night, and Bruce almost drops the plate he’s loading in the dishwasher.

He catches it at the last second but nails his shin against the open dishwasher door, and the whole thing rattles dangerously as he swears under his breath. Across from the island, Tony abruptly stops snickering at whatever Buzzfeed article Darcy’s sent him—Bruce can’t generally keep track—and jerks his head up from his iPad.

“Say that again,” he says, and there’s something tight in his tone.

Standing next to the breakfast nook, Teddy swallows. “I think I want to move to a different foster home,” he repeats, and his voice shakes.

For the first time all weekend, the house is calm and quiet, hushed like the city after the first snowfall of the season. Bruce is pretty sure he only thinks of snow because of all the paper snowflakes hanging in the living room and kitchen—Amy’s contribution to their attempts to decorate for the upcoming holiday—but the glow of the white Christmas lights off the pale blue paper and the glitter glue embellishments is warm and welcoming. Amy and Miles are both upstairs, pawing through the huge stack of Christmas-related library books that Amy’d dragged home from school on Friday afternoon; every so often, Bruce can hear their laughter floating down into the kitchen.

Right now, though, there’s no laughter. Instead, there’s Teddy with his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, his eyes trained on the floor, and the sudden thick feeling in the back of Bruce’s throat.

Tony locks the iPad and flips the case shut, the whole of his attention trained on Teddy. He squints, frowns, rolls his lips together, and huffs out a breath; when he raises a hand, he drags it over his goatee and then down to the side of his neck, his whole face tight. Bruce is still studying the tension in his shoulders when he asks, “Is this because you met with your guardian ad litem today? Is he pressuring you to get the hell out of dodge? Because if this is the queer thing, I will personally light him on—”

“Jean-Paul is at least three times gayer than you, so no, it’s not the queer thing,” Teddy cuts in, and Tony’s posture immediately tightens. For a split-second, he looks angry, but then the hurt that lurks under the surface creeps into his eyes and his shoulders soften. Teddy just sighs and slides a hand through his hair. “I— It’s partially because I talked to Jean-Paul,” he admits after a moment, “but it’s also just . . . everything.”

He punctuates the end of his sentence with a shrug, but there’s a tremble in the back of his voice that Bruce still can’t quite place. He watches as Teddy sinks down onto the bench at the breakfast nook, his hands lacing together between his knees and his whole body slumping; across the island from the teen, Tony scratches his fingers through his hair and averts his eyes. Bruce tries to draw in a long, steady breath, to find words to fill the sudden silence that sweeps between them, but he ends up staring at the floor, instead.

They’d spent Saturday together like a family, the five of them digging through boxes of Christmas decorations and hanging lights along the front of the house like something out of a holiday movie from the early nineties. They’d dusted off garland to string around the windows, sorted through Bruce’s boxes of ancient, unused ornaments, and even trekked out together to purchase an actual, live Christmas tree from the local hardware store.

“I used to watch porn on Christmas,” Tony’d complained at one point, his mouth close to Bruce’s ear as Teddy and Miles had debated the merits of two nearly identical trees.

“No one’s stopping you from continuing that ritual,” Bruce’d replied, and he’d laughed when Tony’d pinched his hip.

By the end of the night Saturday, they’d decorated the tree, hung the last of Amy’s snowflakes, and watched two-thirds of _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ before all five of them nodded off in various places across the living room.

And Sunday morning, Teddy’s guardian ad litem had picked him up for brunch, a movie, and a discussion about his case, and Teddy’d remained silent and serious for the rest of the day.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Tony says suddenly, and Bruce jerks himself out of his own thoughts just in time to watch his husband circle the island to stand in front of Teddy. He stares him down for a moment, but instead of confrontational, his expression’s soft, almost thoughtful. When he crosses his arms over his chest, Teddy fidgets slightly. “Is this coming from your guardian ad litem, or is it coming from you?”

Teddy swallows. “Does it matter?”

“Given that I’m really not worried about what anybody _besides_ you thinks about your life in my house, yeah, it does.” Teddy snorts a little at that, his eyes still trained down at his hands, and Tony sighs. “Look, kid, if you’re miserable here, then you’re miserable,” he says, and Bruce rolls his lips together at the note of hurt that radiates through every word. “We can’t lock you in the attic Bertha Rochester style just because we like you and want to keep you. But I think after everything, we should have a conversation before we sign the paperwork and send you and Amy off to—”

“Not Amy.” 

The words hit Bruce like a freight train, almost knocking the wind out of him, and when he glances over, he discovers that Teddy’s raised his head to stare at both of them. His eyes are big and gentle, almost _lost_ , and Bruce curls his hands against the lip of the counter to keep from walking over and wrapping the boy up in his arms. A few feet away, something helpless and pained flashes across Tony’s expression, his fingers clutching his own arms just a few degrees tighter.

At the breakfast nook, Teddy sighs and shakes his head.

“Everything that’s happened since we moved here, it’s my fault,” he says softly, and Bruce swears he hears his own heart breaking as he watches Teddy drop his gaze back down to the floor. “All the stuff with the criminal case, all the lies, I did that. It’s on me. And today, talking to Jean-Paul, I just realized— I’m the problem, you know? I’m the reason everything turns to shit. It’s _me_.”

His voice cracks, and for one heart-stopping instant, Bruce thinks Tony’ll surge forward to hug Teddy or shake him, to stem whatever tide Teddy’s fighting against, to dry the dampness that clings to Teddy’s eyelids. But then, Teddy swipes at his eyes with his fingers and draws in a shaky breath, and the moment breaks.

“Amy loves you guys,” he says after a beat, and Bruce feels his own chest tighten. “I’ve never seen her so happy, and I just— I can’t help thinking that she could have the kind of life she deserves here without the kid who almost ruined it. She could have a family.” When he lifts his head, his whole face starts to crumple, and Bruce swallows around helpless feeling that stats to creep up his own throat. “Amy needs a family.”

“And what do you need?” Tony asks. Teddy glances over, his jaw working, but Tony just shrugs. “I’ll accept Amy needs a family. I mean, rare is the person who _doesn’t_ , whether it’s blood relations or found family or an office full of shockingly queer lawyers who intermarry like Appalachians.” Teddy snorts lightly, his mouth almost lifting in a smile, and Tony gifts them both with a tiny grin. “What I want to know is what Teddy Altman needs.”

Teddy purses his lips and glances back down at his hands. “I can get by on whatever,” he says quietly.

“Once again, that’s _not_ the question.” 

Teddy starts to roll his eyes, his shoulders squaring into something like a challenge, but Tony just pushes away from the counter and drops to crouch in front of him. Teddy jerks a little at that, almost flinching, and Bruce hears the tremor in his breath when their eyes meet. 

But Tony—beautiful, ridiculous, irrepressible Tony—just reaches out and, very lightly, touches Teddy’s arm. “We’re orphans,” he says, his voice so soft and gentle and that it almost physically pains Bruce to hear it. “The big guy, me, Miles— We’re a family of orphans who run around with orphaned friends. Our only well-adjusted buddy’s marrying a recently expunged felon with a penchant for brothel pillows and sandwich-stealing cats.” Teddy very nearly smiles at that, and Tony beams. “We’re a screwed-up bunch, every single one of us. We’re broken, we’re messy, we’re loaded down with baggage like the worst kind of hoarders, and that’s never gonna change. But we know what it’s like to be where you’re sitting right now. We know the lonely, and the hopeless, and the _bad_.” He glances over at Bruce, his dark eyes sparkling. “In a lot of ways, that’s how we ended up together.”

“And because you brought pizza for Miles,” Bruce reminds him with a little smile.

“The best way to a man’s heart _is_ through his twelve-year-old’s stomach,” Tony replies, and Teddy actually laughs when Bruce rolls his eyes. Tony grins at both of them and squeezes Teddy’s arm. “We’re a mess,” he says honestly, “and if you really don’t want to be party to all that, well, we can’t blame you for cutting and running. But if the only reason you want to leave is because you think we’d be better off without you, then I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.”

For one long, tense moment, Teddy and Tony simply stare at each other, the teen’s eyes glistening with tears as he studies the man crouched in front of him. Bruce’s heart races, throbbing like he’s run a marathon and is just now bursting across the finish line. Upstairs, Amy shrieks with laughter and one of the dogs barks, and Bruce is struck so hard by the same thought that’s plagued him for the last week that he spends a few seconds just remembering how to breathe.

“You’re our family,” he says suddenly, and both Tony and Teddy twist away from each other to stare up at him in surprise. Bruce shakes his head a little, trying to clear away the cobwebs, but he somehow can’t stop himself from speaking. “Even if you switch foster homes, you’ll always be part of us. Part of Miles’s life, and Amy’s, someone we’ll remember and care for no matter how far you go.” His voice catches, and he swallows thickly. “You’re part of us now, and that won’t change.”

“I’ve never—” Teddy starts to say, but the words wobble. The breath that follows is jerky, almost broken, and when he wipes at his eyes again, his fingertips come away damp. He shakes his head. “I’ve never had a foster home really feel like a family before,” he murmurs. “If I can still have that, I—”

“You can always have that,” Tony says, and Bruce realizes the instant he hears it that it’s not a general statement but an absolute promise. “No matter what happens next, that family bit? That’s _yours_.”

Teddy nods, just once, before a sob wrenches out of him, and within seconds, he’s crying hard enough that his whole body trembles. Bruce shoves away from the counter to reach for him, to offer some sort of weak comfort—but Tony, still crouched in front of him, reaches out first.

He reaches out and wraps Teddy in his arms like he’s a lost little boy, to dig fingers into his messy hair and rock him like he’s chasing away all the monsters and dragons of his worst dreams. He reaches out and _holds_ him, his own breath shaky and uncertain as he shushes Teddy’s tears in the kind of whisper he only saves for Miles and Dot.

“Like I said before, we’ve got you,” he says, and when Bruce slides his hand along Tony’s back, he swears he feels Tony’s certainty radiating off him like a physical presence. “As long as you’ll have us, as long as you want to stick around, we’ve _got_ you, and we're not letting go.”

==

 

A few days later, Bruce wakes up to Tony’s hand spreading across his hip as Tony kisses along his shoulder.

It’s a bitterly cold winter morning, and the frost on the windowpane blots out the first hint of hazy gray daylight. There’s snow in the forecast for the next three or four days, and every morning for the last week, the local meteorologist’s opened his portion of the newscast with the chorus from “White Christmas.” Bruce knows that rolling out of bed to face the day means facing the kind of chill that settles in his bones and leaves his teeth chattering.

Lucky for him, his husband’s armed with better plans.

Tony cups his cheek when he kisses him, his mouth warm and still sleep-lazy, and Bruce sighs into his mouth as he rolls into his heat. Even half-awake, his body knows and _wants_ Tony, and he can’t stop his hands from traveling along the plane of Tony’s back and down to his waist. He traces the shape of his muscles over his t-shirt before he shoves his hands underneath, and Tony hisses at the shock of cold fingers against his bare skin. He nips at Bruce’s lower lip as punishment, and Bruce barely swallows his moan before Tony slips away to kiss the corner of his mouth, his jaw, and then the soft spot under his ear.

“You know what today is, right?” he asks in a whisper, and something in the pit of Bruce’s stomach trembles when he realizes that this gray, freezing December morning is also their one-year wedding anniversary.

Tony draws in a sharp breath when Bruce buries a hand in his hair and _tugs_ , but the tension seeps right out of his body when Bruce finds his mouth to kiss him again. It’s harder than before, hungrier, and Tony opens his knees enough to fit Bruce’s thigh between his legs. Bruce rolls them both over, his hand spreading across Tony’s ribs as Tony groans into his mouth. They rock together, the kiss turning dirty as Tony’s hand snakes under his pajamas and spreads over the small of his back, two fingers slipping under his waistband as—

The hard, urgent knock hits Bruce like a bucket of ice water to the face, and he’s barely allowed enough time to half-roll, half-fall off Tony before the bedroom door swings open. “Hi!” Amy announces, bounding into the bedroom with a thousand-watt grin. Her hair and shoulders are lightly dusted with snow, and it takes Bruce a moment to realize that she’s wearing her winter coat over her pajamas.

She’s also carrying an enormous box of doughnuts from their usual Saturday morning doughnut venue, and there’s chocolate on her chin.

“Amy, we told you to wait!” Miles shouts from somewhere down the hallway. He skids into the bedroom a moment later, his expression absolutely _horrified_. He stands in the doorway for a moment, a plastic carafe of coffee dangling from his hand as he surveys the scene: his two fathers still in bed with messy hair and messier bedclothes, their legs tangled and chest still heaving as one of the two (Tony) smirks like the cat who caught the canary. 

His face, caught somewhere between embarrassment and relief, flushes. “We told her to wait,” he defends helplessly.

Amy twists around to level him a glare. “I wanted to bring them their anniversary doughnuts,” she informs him.

“After you already stole the one you wanted?” Teddy asks from behind Miles’s shoulder, and Amy immediately wrinkles her nose at him. The teen grins. “We interrupting anything?”

“No,” Bruce says, but not before Tony sighs and answers, “So many things.” He shoots Tony a warning glance, and Tony shrugs. “I had plans,” he comments, and flops back down onto the pillow.

Miles rolls his eyes. “You are _so_ gross,” he gripes, finally stepping into the bedroom.

Teddy laughs and follows behind, and Bruce only realizes that he’s armed with a TV tray after he’s unfolded it next to the bed and set out two coffee mugs and a stack of dessert-sized plates. Miles starts pouring coffee, his eyes focused very pointedly on the task at hand, but Amy simply climbs up onto the end of the bed and shoves the box of doughnuts in Bruce and Tony’s direction. “Teddy’s friend Kate took us,” she informs them. “She _owed_ him.”

Tony grins. “Do I want to know?” he asks, glancing over at Teddy.

Teddy shrugs innocently. “I work in mysterious ways,” he replies, and Tony’s laughter fills the room up with warmth.

If you count the chocolate sprinkled one with the huge bite out of it, there’s a dozen doughnuts in the box, and Tony steals two for himself before he starts passing it around to everyone else. By the time everyone’s armed with the doughnut of their choice and Miles’s handed out the coffee mugs, Amy’s repositioned herself to sit next to Bruce, her head almost on his shoulder while she munches happily on her breakfast. Teddy settles onto the edge of the bed while Miles, still red around the edges, flops down onto the chair in the corner of the room, and for a few minutes, they eat in warm, comfortable peace.

“I wanted to get you a real present for your anniversary,” Miles says after a time, and Bruce glances over to find him slowly dissecting his jelly doughnut. “The last time Ganke and I went to the mall, we tried to come up with something, but with everything that’s happened, I kind of figured breakfast might be the best choice.”

Bruce smiles. “I appreciate that _one_ of you knows how to keep it low-key.”

Tony immediately flashes him one of his most betrayed expressions. “You mean two semi-permanent foster kids _isn’t_ the best anniversary gift on the planet?” he asks, eyes sparkling. There’s powdered sugar in his goatee and on his t-shirt, and in that second, Bruce can’t help all the love that wells up in his chest. 

But he also knows that all that love’s reflected in his face and his smile, because when he reaches over to brush the sugar away, Tony purposely tips his head enough to kiss the pad of his thumb and smiles like the sun.

“We should try flowers next year,” Bruce says by way of an answer, and when Tony leans over to kiss him, all three kids groan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments will be answered later (perhaps next week), for I am very tired as I write this end note.
> 
> Next chapter is really the epilogue to this story, which makes this the last big, substantive, plotty chapter. As such, I want to take an opportunity on this day of thanks and thank all of you for reading, commenting, and being part of this story. Chain of Custody sort of spiraled out of my control early on, but everyone's been wonderful and happily along for the mysterious, strange, delightful ride that it ended up being. I am so grateful to each and every one of you for taking the time to read these words. I know it's an undertaking to do so; it's an undertaking to write it. But as I frequently say, I would've quit writing a long time ago were it not for the enthusiasm of my Motion Practitioners, and that remains as true today as it did two-plus years ago.
> 
> Thank you so very, very much for being part of this journey. You are all amazing. Yes, seriously. Every last one of you.


	18. 30,000 Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The concept of causation is an easy one: you track events back until you find the one pebble that started the ripple, the event that set off the chain reaction. Bruce can track his life back and back, from Detective Munroe’s appearance in their home, to Jessica Jones’s meddling, to a fire a few miles away, to his settled family life with Tony and Miles.
> 
> He’s not sure how the links fit together, or whether the chain might unravel.
> 
> But that’s never stopped him and Tony before, now has it?
> 
> In this chapter, Bruce, Tony, and all three children embark on an adventure, but it’s Bruce’s heart that soars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again: I don’t need no stinking calendars.
> 
> I talk a lot about my beta-readers, Jen and saranoh, but allow me to be very clear right now: I could not do any of this without them. They are amazing not only as grammar-checking ninjas but as cheerleaders and support. Without their help, I never would have finished a fifth big story in this series. They’re the greatest.
> 
> Incidentally, so are all of you.

“I know you didn’t marry me for the money,” Tony says, his chest brushing Bruce’s back and his hand hovering just a few inches from Bruce’s hip, “but you realize I have literally enough cash to buy a small island nation, right? Because I think sometimes you forget important facts like that, which leads to both of us being here, in the main cabin of a lackluster commercial airliner, instead of in—”

“You can see the wings!” Amy announces, spinning around in the middle of the aisle. Despite the cloying heat inside the plane, she’s still wearing her winter coat and a hat, but her whole face lights up as she cranes her neck to glance up at Bruce and Tony. “We’re _really_ inside the plane.”

“Where’d you think they were taking us, a cave?” Miles teases, and Amy crinkles her nose up at him as they all continue to inch their way down the plane’s narrow center aisle. 

The whole of Suffolk County’s blanketed in a thin layer of snow on this, the third day after Christmas, and the glare of the winter sun reflects back into the plane, filling it with light. Throughout the cabin, strangers shove belated gifts into overhead compartments and under seats, calm fussing babies, and complain down their cell phones about unnecessary delays, a cacophony of sound that reminds Bruce that they’re all lingering inside a giant metal tube. Behind him, Tony sighs grumpily and rests his head on the back of Bruce’s shoulder; in front of them, Miles plays with the fuzzy ball on the end of Amy’s Santa hat while Teddy squints at their tickets.

“One more row,” Teddy informs them, and Tony groans audibly as the woman in front of Teddy rearranges the overhead compartment for the third time in as many minutes.

They’d spent the whole of their Christmas together at home, the five of them gathered like a family around the tree and, later, around the dinner table. Steve, Bucky, and Dot’d joined them for dinner, Natasha and Pepper’d materialized just in time for dessert, and Bruce’d spent most of his evening on the couch with a glass of eggnog, laughing with his friends. His whole life’d felt warm and full that night, and he swears sometimes that it’s still lingering in the root of his stomach, a light that won’t stop glowing.

And then, the day _after_ Christmas—once Amy’d returned home from a visit to her mother’s and Teddy’d returned from Hanukkah dinner with the Kaplans—Bruce and Tony’d sprung their last Christmas present on the kids: tickets to fly to Phil and Clint’s wedding up in rural Nebraska.

“With special approval from Jessica,” Tony’d said as he’d waved around his iPad (and their electronic tickets) like some sort of banner, “because apparently, family-style vacations to the middle of nowhere are like chicken soup for the soul.”

He’d quickly learned that “chicken soup for the soul” required completing a week’s worth of teenage laundry—dress clothes included—in two days and fighting with a seven-year-old about which dress to bring to the wedding.

Lucky for them, the seven-year-old’s now too starry-eyed over the prospect of flying in an actual plane to remember the tearful tantrum over her favorite gray sweater dress.

Eventually, the woman in the aisle manages to shove the last of her Christmas gifts into the overhead bin, and Teddy successfully leads them to their seats. Bruce corrals Amy and Miles into his row while Tony and Teddy slide into the row behind them, and Teddy sighs happily when he realizes that he’s in the exit row with all its extra leg room. 

“Why isn’t there a third chair in your row?” Amy asks. She’s kneeling on the middle seat, her chin resting on the back as she peers at her foster brother and father.

Teddy smiles. “It’s a special row.”

“Special how?”

“Special in that there’s a bunch of requirements to sitting here,” Tony supplies. He shoves his bag into the overhead bin before dropping back into his seat. “You’ve gotta be at least fifteen years old, physically capable of helping in an emergency, devastatingly handsome—”

“And yet, they let you sit here,” Teddy deadpans, and Bruce isn’t sure what’s funnier: Tony’s stricken little squeak of indignation, or Teddy’s innocent smile. 

After long enough, the plane finally fills with people, and the flight attendants flit up and down the rows, inspecting everyone’s carry-on items, electronic devices, and seatbelts. One’s armed with a basket of snacks and juice boxes, and she passes them out to all the young children on the plane, Amy and Miles included. Miles gloats about his juice box so loudly that the flight attendant doubles back to hand one to Teddy; the ensuing friendly bickering leaves Bruce rolling his eyes.

Still, there’s something quietly magical about the way Amy gasps when the plane starts to taxi away from the gate and about how Miles patiently allows her to lean her head against his shoulder as she peers out the window. When they start to pick up speed on the runway, she grabs Bruce’s hand, and he smiles and holds on until they’re finally, miraculously airborne.

“I want the window seat on the way back,” she whispers as they start passing through the clouds, her face warm with wonder.

“We can do that,” Bruce promises, and he strokes her messy hair as she relaxes back into her seat.

They're just reaching cruising altitude when the woman across the aisle leans over to Bruce and smiles. “You're very brave,” she says with a conspiratorial smile. 

Bruce glances up from his book, eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?” 

Next to the woman, a man around her age sighs. “Leave the man alone, Edie.” 

Edie waves him off. “We had four little ones, ourselves,” she explains, nodding vaguely to where Miles and Amy are peacefully sharing the iPad. “My sister, she lived in Chicago in those days, and we'd drive up every year. Four children in the car, fighting and complaining . . . ” She shakes her head, chuckling. “It's a miracle they all lived into adulthood.”

“Not for a lack of trying on my part,” the man—presumably her husband—mutters, and Edie smacks him lightly in the knee. 

Bruce smiles slightly, ready to correct her misconception— after all, Amy and Teddy are well-behaved foster children on their first “family” trip, a far cry from four small children in the back of an old-style van—but before he can speak, there's a hand tugging at his sweater. When he glances over, he discovers that Amy’s clutching a mangled straw in one hand and a slightly deformed juice box in the other. 

“Miles broke it,” she reports. 

Miles rolls his eyes. “I didn't break it, I just tried to open it. You obviously busted it before you handed it off to me.”

Amy's whole face crumples. “I did _not_ break it, you—”

“I'll take care of it,” Bruce cuts in, and Amy sends Miles one last withering glance before she hands over the offending juice box. 

“Hello,” Edie greets, and when Amy blinks in surprise, she offers the girl a slow, sweet smile. “Are you enjoying your flight?”

Amy’s face bursts into a grin. “I’ve never been on an airplane before,” she says, her voice _just_ loud enough that the woman in front of Bruce glances over her shoulder. “Miles said I can have the window seat on the way home.”

“ _Dad_ said it, not me,” Miles corrects, still fiddling with the iPad.

Amy wrinkles her nose. “Same thing.”

Across the aisle, Edie chuckles. “My granddaughter just had her first plane ride a few months ago when she came to visit me and Frank,” she says, and Frank releases a long-suffering grunt as he flips a page in his novel. “Are you visiting family, too?”

Amy shakes her head. “We’re going to a wedding,” she replies, pausing only to push her hair out of her eyes. “Phil and Clint are going to make promises and kiss, and after that, we’re eating cake.”

Bruce abandons the juice box to glance over at her. “Where’d you learn about the cake?” he asks, frowning slightly.

She beams. “Dot!”

He laughs softly and shakes his head. “Of course,” he replies, and returns to fighting with Amy’s juice box.

He’s almost pierced the stupid foil seal when, suddenly, there’s fingers carding through his hair. When he tips his head back, Tony’s looming over him, his arms resting lightly on the back of Bruce’s seat and his lips curled into one of his Cheshire grins. “I know you’re busy bonding, big guy,” he says, his fingertips smoothing along Bruce’s hairline, “but I think my glasses weaseled their way into your bag.”

In the window seat, Miles snickers. “You’re admitting you need glasses today?” he asks with a smirk.

“The print on the instructions for selling my kid on eBay is _really_ tiny, so . . . ” Their son promptly rolls his eyes, and Tony leans over for the express purpose of running a hand over his close-cropped hair. Miles wriggles, Amy laughs, and Bruce sighs at _both_ of them before he finally digs Tony’s glasses out of his carry-on.

Tony kisses the back of his knuckles as a silent thank you and drops back into his seat, and Bruce realizes belatedly that the glasses are helping him and Teddy in the crossword puzzle they’re sharing. He smiles at that.

Across the aisle, Edie grins knowingly. “Your husband’s very handsome,” she comments.

Frank groans. “Can you _please_ leave the man alone?”

Bruce smiles at both of them. “Trust me, Tony’s heard it before.”

Behind him, Tony snorts something like a laugh. “And since Tony _also_ heard that, I think the relevant question for the rest of this flight becomes: is it bad form to divorce your husband at somebody else’s wedding?”

“Only if we get to eat cake before you fight,” Amy says sagely, and there’s exactly one beat of pause before all of them—Tony, Bruce, and both boys included—burst out laughing.

They lapse into silence shortly after that, Bruce still fighting with the juice box while Tony and Teddy debate crossword clues and Amy and Miles hum their way through the songs on a Disney movie. Surrounded by snippets of other people’s conversations and the hum of the engines feels suddenly _right_ , and as Bruce finally shoves the twisted straw into Amy’s apple juice, he feels like his contentment is a physical force that radiates outward.

Edie must feel it, too, because when she leans over again, it’s to squeeze Bruce’s wrist. “You have a very lovely family,” she says, and he swears her whole face glows.

Bruce smiles. “Thanks,” he says warmly, and hands Amy her apple juice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be replying to comments sometime in the next few days. In the meantime: thank you so, so much for reading this story (as well as all the others), and I will see you all in two weeks for "A Marriage of True Minds, Part 1"!


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